Streamer priority confirmed. PoE is free to play, so play it for free, but Boycott GGG.

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awesome999 wrote:

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

This was not their usual internal shenanigans. At all. But, again, if you'd read what I wrote instead of forcing me to repeat it here for purely your benefit, you'd know that, and you'd know that the core message is not, again, about 'putting GGG out of business'.

This is why I see this boycott as yet another failure. An half hearted attempt would not achieve anything. Telling the junkies not to give GGG their money but keep their craving for the dope...

These meekly protest will not signify anything meaningful, as I have yet see anything significant happening, it is not really a boycott... more of ranting.

As The COLLECTIVE, I like to point out we are not very collective as a whole.

All very true, but one has to start somewhere. Allow me that, or don't. Your permission is not really a factor.

As for courses of action, I know the subreddit has a rule against calls to action, so that avenue's out. Most media outlets won't touch it because they obviously don't want to burn this bridge...and ultimately, I do believe that an independent GGG wouldn't have done what a Tencent-owned GGG did, because no one's going to take on Tencent money anyway.

And if it's just me 'ranting', so be it. I think I've seen sufficient evidence within this thread and on the official announcements forum to indicate it's something more than that, that I am far from alone.

Ironically, the person who taught me to fight this way was Chris himself. He knows the war against bots/RMT cannot be won, but he fought it anyway. I saw it myself, in person -- while we were fartarsing about on Rock Band of a friday night, he was massacring bots on his laptop. Before that, I was very much the sort of person who saw injustice or immoral behaviour as just a part of life, of the infinite imbalance into which we're all born. I did not believe in personal agency beyond the daily events of our lives. War on drugs, war on terror...war on piracy...? Labels, trite little offerings of lip services to the impossible ideal, excuses to engage in war-profiteering and powerplays. But Chris' war against bots? Man, he believed in that. And righteousness is kind of contagious. I was righteous for all things GGG for years. And I showed it, in every way I could. Including far more rants than I allow myself these days.

At any rate, this is a good fight. I believe in it. Win or lose. At this point, both are sort of abstract concepts anyway, as they are in any real war. And honestly let's not elevate the situation to that sort of poignancy or significance. Tencent is incomprehensibly massive; GGG are a part of that now. But Chris knew they fucked up, he's admitted the error repeatedly, expressed something resembling an apology. There is still some...tension between how a Tencent-owned company operates and how Chris wants to be seen as GGG's Managing Director (and not, say, as just a figurehead). He still wants to be seen as PoE's owner, when we all know that is no longer the truth. He does not own GGG; he merely works there, for GGG, owned by Tencent. This is strangely something a lot of Exiles either don't comprehend or don't want to acknowledge. Either way, what happened on Ultimatum's launch day was starkly contradictory to so much of Chris' traditional image and therefore GGG's image that it would be remiss of those who remember that image not to say something...and those who still support it to realise that's not what they're supporting anymore.

My voice might be tiny, but what might sound like distant thunder is loud somewhere.

Forums overreacting as always...

Was the streamer priority a bad idea? Absolutley.
They shouldve put a clause in the streamer contracts that would excempt server or login downtime from contractual gametime. Baffles me, that they didnt think of possible server issues beforehand, but whatever.

Now all you tinfoil-hat wearing people come out with all your cringe theories (streamer get better loot, better 6link, chris hates poe community and so on...) and bombard the forum.

Heres a hint : the majority of the playerbase doesnt care and is not affected at all by this whole thing. The top 1% will always be the top 1%, no matter what, they play a different game here.

And MAYBE, just maybe, Chris and the other GGG staff are just human beings and can make mistakes. He acknowlegded his mistake, which is more than i can say for most of the forum users.

Youre free to spend money on this game or just dont. Youre not a figther for a higher cause. Youre not special.

Having a discussion and providing feedback is important, but please stop these ridiculous accusations and threats, youre embarassing yourself.

Speak with your wallet and keep the crazy theories to yourself.

Have a good day, exile!

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Malichus wrote:

GGG made a mistake, admitted it, and promised it would not happen again.

And how many thousand times has this happened in the past years?
Every league? And you still believe them? o_O

You know that in "real world" a company that makes so many mistakes goes out of business, right? And you know that many other gaming companies that made far less mistakes still went out of business?

But sure, we should go on giving our money to a always-on-mistake company that seems to never listen to his customers, why not!

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Marthuk wrote:

Speak with your wallet

That's -exactly- what this thread is about and call for, but from what you write is obvious you completely missed the point or you just read the title. :-(

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Anteo12 wrote:

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Marthuk wrote:

Speak with your wallet

That's -exactly- what this thread is about and call for, but from what you write is obvious you completely missed the point or you just read the title. :-(

No, im not missing the point. This "Call to Arms" is just over the top ridiculous. This whole thing is not nearly as bad as some people make it out to be.
If people dont wanna support the game over this anymore, go ahead.

But stop demonizing developers and putting evil intentions in human errors.

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FaintXD wrote:

Honestly iv spent way to much in this game... The actions of GGG supporting streamers to the level they did upsets me.

Streamers already get *Paid* To play a fun game you took the actions to sponsor them which in turn gives them more money but alienated your fans

shame on you since I don't buy support packs to support streamers I buy them to support GGG for them to turn around use my funds I pay to them. to hire streamers then give them advantages and make no mistakes they are given more advantages then they let on I have no doubts.

just shows me you don't need my money anymore I could care less about streamers. Personally I think they need a real job so I'll keep my money to myself.

+1

Lets do a quick math,
20streamers times 2hours times 30bucks is like 1200.
That equals the value of a burning bush in the desert.
But i´m pretty sure some people might find a bigger pile to set on fire.

Why are we here again waving torches ?
Because of one unversed random dude who only plays this game competitionly for 2 hours. A shame we can´t fire him and are now burning down the building.
Cancelculture needs to learn to aquire targets.

Still its a bit of a stupidity to pay your workers in amazon giftcards or special privileges or MagicTX instead of fluid papermoney.

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DoubleU wrote:

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ChanBalam wrote:

If the Streamers had the same RNG as I have, watching would be pretty boring.

+1 right there.

This is an interesting point. I absolutely do not believe in 'streamer RNG' or manipulated content -- I just think the cream rises to the top and in PoE terms, that means streamers who are a good mix of charismatic, astute and efficient. They make the game look good because they play it well, and they play it a lot. Just as few people watched all 24 hours a day of Big Brother, we mostly get the highlights, which can then make it look like they're doing better than others.

On the other hand, I do think my old train of thought that 'GGG are morally upstanding and would never overtly give streamers any sort of advantage over non-streamers' has been sort of derailed, thanks pretty much to GGG themselves. So I am now a little more susceptible to the notion that if they can do this openly because of 'money, piles of it', perhaps they're not so above doing that on the sly. It would be good business, IF it's somehow deemed necessary to make the game look good. If.

Just as I will not praise GGG for 'banning' cheaters (as convenient as the timing was), I won't praise the streamers who asked to be removed from the instant access list. In both cases, I think we're looking at the bare minimum, and once you start praising that, standards of 'good' go through the floor.

And despite everything, I think PoE has some very good streamers who do the game a massive service by playing it as well as they do, as entertainingly as they do. Hopefully no one's obtuse enough to still think that PoE would have been the success it was without streamers...so I'm all for GGG spoiling them with aesthetics or merch or anything else that doesn't affect the gameplay. That doesn't directly contradict the fairness-for-all foundation upon which the GGG of yesteryear made so much of its most important money -- back when it really needed it.

I think highly enough of the most well-known PoE streamers that were they offered something like 'favoured' RNG for drops, they'd mostly say no.

Outsiders who are here only for a pile of money, or entire posses of elitist Exiles supporting a particularly noxious streamer? I'm not so sure there.

What's with the most vocal people in this thread being people who haven't logged into the game in years - what's their ulterior motive?