Deeply frustrating to see. Their only sin in my book is selling it instead of freely distributing it, something Bethesda is equally guilty of. I only hope they make it out of this okay.
Like I said downthread, I wasn’t really looking at derailing this thread by starting a debate, but to clarify my position, the industry as it exists today collapsing is entirely okay with me. I’d be happy to live in a world where all games were freely distributed public domain solo endeavors, small collaborations, and the rare larger (but still not this large, likely) productions organized as public works or naturally-occurring oddities.
When were games ever like that. Even in the microcomputer era sole bedroom coders were still selling their titles to publishers to make some money out of it. What your suggesting sounds like a horrible experience where everything is stuck in early access forever but with less reason for people to finish their project as no one has put money down.
whether or not games were ever like that isn’t actually relevent to the point they made, also tons of unfinished games are basically already sold as complete.
like, the game industry is incredibly exploitative, even if piracy does causes direct harm to it, thats honestly a good thing, it is set up to benefit publishers and share-holders over anyone else, especially the people actually making the games. supporting the end of that isn’t “hippy-dippy”
What they were describing was basically a society that relies on a gift economy, which has already existed in the past, and still exists in some places and forms today. We’ve been brainwashed by capitalist societies to think that would be a “hippy-dippy, fantasy land” because capitalism and bartering are what is natural to us, but it’s been shown that a gift-based economy is what a lot of uncontacted tribes use. It’s also how a lot of friend groups interoperate - hell, start a minecraft server (some other survival game will do) with your friends right now, and you will almost certainly naturally default to using a gift based economy.
Uncontacted tribes also don’t have advanced medicine (though not to say they haven’t discovered a great deal of important things on their own) or well… videogames. If you want to live like that more power to you, but for all the faults of modern society it has massive benefits as well.
I think there’s plenty of middle ground to be found where we can have our cake and eat it too even if it looks wildly different from what we have now. Gift economies just don’t work when you have billions of people involved. It’s ultimately more efficient to give people money and then they can spend it on what they need or want. Even the idea of a corporation or company isn’t inherently broken, people will always have a need to organize themselves to create efficiencies and build bigger things than they could on their own.
Capitalism is shit, the concept of money, and organized labor, is quite good.
Uncontacted tribes are not the only ones that have used such systems; plenty of other societies throughout time have used similar systems, some quite recently even. It is not antithetical to modernity. For a recent example of a society that used a gift economy, you can look up “Korean People’s Association in Manchuria”. I was using uncontacted tribes merely as one example to illustrate that the idea that bartering and capitalism are “natural” and “how it always worked” isn’t true, despite that being what many believe.
It’s ultimately more efficient to give people money and then they can spend it on what they need or want.
Why is it more efficient, exactly? In a gift economy, you don’t have to give anyone money for anything and won’t starve for not having enough money. In a gift economy, you help each other where possible and do things such as art or science for fulfilment and not because you have to put food on the table. Someone who can help, but rarely does, slowly begins to get shunned by the rest of society.
EDIT:
To read more on gift economies and anarchism in general, you can read:
Petyr Kropotkin’s Conquest of Bread is a good one; that’s more theory
George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia; a sort of memoir of Orwell’s time in Catalonia fighting alongside anarchists
Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed; a sci-fi story about a futuristic anarchist society living on a planet that mutually orbits another planet that is inhabited by other societies.
How do I get a computer? My neighbors do not make computers. The next 100 towns over don’t either. (at least not in whole) Do I go to the computer people in taiwan with a bunch of stuff the engineers and manufacturing technicians need? How much time would I have to spend to do that? Wouldn’t it be nice if we agreed on a medium of exchange that represented my labor, fair share, or value to society that I could just send electronically and could be exchanged again locally for what they need specifically?
It sure is the way we lived naturally in small tribes, but that’s not tenable at a certain point and it’s why almost every society that has grown to a sufficient size to make good use of it has invented some form of currency.
Money isn’t the problem, it’s the way it’s used.
Also society is so large there’s no way to have that level of accountability for everyone unless you create some neofascist social credit system.
Well, firstly: people would still make them the way they do now. Some would organize and collect materials, and some would refine and make them into parts that eventually make it into computers. The whole chain would still exist, except now it would be done voluntarily. That’s it. Organized labour does not stop existing once you get rid of money. I’m sure you’ve heard of open source software projects.
Which leads into the second part of my comment: it seems to me that your real fear is that there wouldn’t be volunteers for one or several parts of the chain… at which point I have to ask you to take a step back and think about it is that you want, and what you are defending. If there are no volunteers to do a job in such a society, and the only way to get people to do it is threatening them with poverty and starvation, then it is not a job worth doing if you value human rights and dignity.
You probably didn’t catch because I edited late, but I gave some recommended reading at the end of my previous comment. To those, I’ll add David Graeber’s The Dawn of Everything and Bullshit Jobs.
The logistics just boggle the mind. It’s an interesting concept I do want to explore and will when I have some time to look into it deeper. I think I know what you are saying a little better, I just can’t envision it working in such a global economy that’s required to give people a high quality of life.
Also I don’t think the choice ever should be shit job or starve, I just don’t think you need to eliminate the concept of money or regulated “free markets” to do that. In a rational market system you gain a lot of efficiency by having it steer people to more efficient processes and encourage people to do the difficult or unpleasant things that need done with rewards.
We value similar things we just have different ideas of how you get there.
If people want to live in a fully-automated luxury space communist utopia where everyone is free from want and able to make and release games for free as passion projects, that’s great, and a worthy goal to work towards, but promoting piracy on principle without concern for how developers will be supported during their work in the context of our current capitalist society is somewhere between naive at best and self-serving rationalization at worst.
This is not bait, I truly believe that all non-private art and information should be freely available to all for any purpose and liberating it is always a good thing. I’ll leave your report unresolved for another mod to weigh in on, but I’m not looking for an argument and gave a minimal response precisely because I did not want to encourage shit-flinging.
I think your opinion is disrespectful towards artists. It implies that they don’t deserve to be compensated for their work and consequently that their profession is less worthy. Why art specifically? What sets their product apart from other goods?
I assume because the topic is video games. Maybe I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure they are against the whole current system and would prefer a gift based economy. I don’t think they are defending a capitalist system where artists don’t get paid.
Fr you’re a mod, you’re not allowed to be a human with feelings and ideas and opinions! Just blindly care about the community, don’t contribute to the discourse!!
It’s immature, and unprofessional. Anybody could goad a mod like that to misusing their authority, driving people away from the sub and completely destroying their credibility. Other people won’t put up with it.
This isn’t a job. They are a user like you who happen to also volunteer to mod because someone has to. They have just as much right to share their opinion as you do, and they did it politely. Besides, they didn’t even start an argument, they just shared an opinion, confirmed it, and then clarified again; all of it in a polite manner.
Anybody could goad a mod like that to misusing their authority
They seem to have handled the situation just fine and even left the report for other mods to handle. I really don’t see what the big issue is.
This isn’t a job. They are a user like you who happen to also volunteer to mod because someone has to.
And they willingly chose to accept the responsibility that goes along with being a mod in exchange for that kind of power over others. That means they’re going to be held to a higher ethical standard than regular users and are looked down upon if they argue with users openly, because to allow it is to allow them to do worse shit, like ban users for disagreeing with them or even winning said arguments.
It doesn’t matter if mods get paid or not. They have to adhere to that responsibility or everyone suffers, even if you personally don’t care what they do. You’re just part of the problem.
Why would any of you think it’s okay for mods to power-trip? Is it because you have no standards? Or you wish to do the same yourself?
They seem to have handled the situation just fine and even left the report for other mods to handle. I really don’t see what the big issue is.
It’s the principle of the thing, which you don’t understand because you don’t have any real values.
Firstly, the one rule of the instance of the community you are commenting on is “be nice”, so maybe relax on the hostilities. That user acted perfectly respectfully, and you came in calling them immature and unprofessional. Afterwards, I replied to in what I think was also a polite manner, and now you’re accusing me of having no values. So if you wanna talk about no values and immaturity, feel free to look in a mirror and talk to that person. This will be my last reply to you.
Secondly, you’re asking for someone who mods a community to be excluded from it. Why would anyone want to mod a community they like, if it means being excluded from it, or why would you want the mods to be people who don’t like a community?
Why would any of you think it’s okay for mods to power-trip?
I never said anything close to even implying that, and you know that. You are simply arguing in bad faith and being a nuisance. You’ve created far more problems than they ever did, and it seems you’re the one trying to exert some kind of power over the community of an instance you are not even a part of by implying that someone, who did not act reprehensibly in any way, should step down from a mod position, just because you’ve decided they should not share their opinions.
So, to reiterate: there was a misunderstanding that was quickly cleared up. There was no abuse of power. You came in and insulted someone, then insulted me, and created a huge drama over a non-issue. And now I’m done with this conversation. Have a good day.
Firstly, the one rule of the instance of the community you are commenting on is “be nice”, so maybe relax on the hostilities.
I would say the same of you but it’s obvious you’re not listening. And that is entirely a you problem.
I’m a mod myself and an asshole, yet somehow I manage to not argue with my own users on my own subs. If I did, you’d be the first to call me out for being disrespectful and abusing my power, so why in the world would I or anyone listen to rhetoric from someone so disingenuous as you?
You don’t care about principle or properly managing a community, you only care about the fact that what I pointed out ruffled your feathers, hit too close to home, and you don’t like it.
People, above all, don’t like hearing the truth. And the truth is that you are just plain wrong and don’t want to accept it. Mods have responsibilities toward their users and that doesn’t change just because you don’t like it.
Let me tell you what you’ll tell me: go outside and touch some grass, it’s not that serious. Find it within yourself to accept it’s okay to be wrong about something.
You must think really highly of yourself being such a good mod and all lmao… Yet you’re a shit person. That mod never said anything out of line. Get a life loser
Yet somehow I, the shit person, know how to behave as a mod better than they do, so that tells me all I need to know about them… and you.
You’re exactly the kind of person whose feathers get ruffled upon hearing these words and that tells us all we need to know about you. None of it is good.
This post/ thread has devolved into back and forths and name calling. You can disagree with how a mod on our instance acts, however I have seen no example of a mod acting in any kind of bad way. There was no arguing. She simply shared her view point. She also said she wouldnt do anything to the report against her. I am not sure what more you want. If you ever think we are power tripping, there is a mod log for all to see. I see no use in keeping this thread open for the time being however. Locking this
I don’t see it as arguing. They’re just clarifying their position. And fwiw, we are all users here too. We don’t have the ability to not show the ‘M’ by our name
That would be a nice feature. I don’t always want to comment or post with my mod hat on. That said, I’m not seeing it on anyone here. Is it an instance-based thing?
Despite spouting a… unique worldview, they are not the one “arguing” with anyone. They have only explained themselves and apologized for taking too much attention. I disagree entirely with their point of view but the idea that they’re picking fights?
No, that’s you. You’re turning this into a fistfight for no reason with this wildly accusatory attitude.
Projecting much? Because I am not the one not listening to reason here, it’s you. It’s not just about this one particular douchebag. It’s the principle of the thing, that is applicable to all mods everywhere on every site.
You don’t get to just decide mods arguing with people in their own communities is okay because you find one particularly likeable. You as a user have a responsibility to hold mods to higher standards to maintain the integrity of the community too, and the only one who stands to suffer because of your refusal to accept it is you.
I’m not sure whether to agree or disagree with you but thanks for being polite about it. Sorry for calling your comment baiting but when I saw something like that that just didn’t expand on anything I figured it would be. Most troll comments are like that. Say something controversial without expanding on it to encourage arguments.
In fact id consider that kind of comment to encourage far more shit-flinging than something thought out like this.
Ahaha yes I think it’s kinda suspect too. Imagine spending millions & millions on a quality title just to give it away for free?
Why would they even do that? Could they even do it? (I believe) It does not work like that :)
Seriously, I can’t imagine a world where you invest millions in a project just to give it for free. I don’t see how someone could think it’s frustrating.
For once, if you like a game and want to support the industry, buy it. Vote with your wallet.
The developers don’t deserve to be paid? Because that’s the crux of it, no sell no profit, no profit no workers. Bye bye studio and any future art because we all are trapped in this capitalist nightmare. Do their families not deserve to be supported for their work?
I’m struggling to understand the motivation of your comment. You seem upset that a studio that worked for many years paying many developers project managers artists etc to create this game is selling the result of their hard work and investments? Where do you think they got the funds to build their latest game? Perhaps from the previous games, content, merch they have produced and sold?
How exactly is a studio to function if they simply hand out their hard work for free? How exactly are they to hire quality people if they are unable to make a profit from their primary product, the games that the developers and artists pour their heart and souls into?
I mean, shit, yeah all information, art, everything should be able to exist without tying it to finance but that’s not the world we live in and it’s not the world these developers work in.
Bye bye studio and any future art because we all are trapped in this capitalist nightmare. Do their families not deserve to be supported for their work?
I think it’s safe to assume they are not fans of capitalism; I doubt they want to keep living in a capitalist system where artists and developers are not paid. They are talking about artists and developers because that’s what the topic is about, but I would assume this thought stretches to all of society.
You’re right, of course. I detest capitalism and while I obviously understand why people and the institutions they build operate under its rules, I see not doing so as a generally good thing. I’m under no delusions that this will bring the change we deserve, that requires actual political action. But liberating art and information is actually possible thanks to filesharing and so we ought to do so.
People seem to be missing the point about Bethesda’s guilt. I know that Bethesda cannot give this game for free and I take for granted that you know they cannot, my point is that because they can’t, they should not exist. I’m not a fool, I know how the world around me works and that games would not be made at this scale (but they would still be made…art LONG predates the profit motive and exists even today where no profit is to be had, and no one could possibly snuff out the human drive to make art) and am willing to take those consequences. I believe withholding art from the public is stealing from the common heritage of mankind, and so we ought to strive for a system in which art can be made and shared freely because people’s needs are taken care of. And yes, I focus on art and information because it is the topic here and it is particularly close to my heart, not because my beliefs stop there.
I just want to say one more time that I wasn’t trying to preach here or start a fight. I just wanted to express my sadness at this situation. That’s it. I only respond because I don’t like having my views misrepresented.
Hasn't starfield been in the making for ages and even had twitch streamers play officially funded streams? Or is that star citizen (or whatever it's called). Not sure if they're the same.
Good. However way you feel about piracy or Bethesda. This is stealing directly from artists and we need to protect artists and their right to make money. Which in turn is their right to live, because we live in a capitalistic society. Denying someone pay is denying them shelter, food, heat, everything. I can only hope that subsequent cases like this for smaller artists are treated similarly as important. I know that’s a tall ask though. That the indie games studio losing money to bootleggers isn’t going to get the same response from the Sheriff’s Office.
This is at least a step in the right direction as cases like this are usually hand waved away as “well those people weren’t going to buy the game anyways.” or “It’s just copying a file.” or best of all “No real damages have been done.”
This is factually untrue. Artists have already been paid for their work and have possibly already been let go. (in many big gaming companies majority of the dev teams are let go on release, they operate on a hire-and-fire cycle) Artists pretty much never have a stake in the company or profit sharing. So there's no real way the # of copies sold has any bearing on their income.
At worst this is Bethesda having 150 copies stolen. Not even tiny devs would blink at that as they get copies stolen through places like G2A constantly. A huge company like Bethesda is worried more about early copies breaking embargo date that shows bad or buggy gameplay, negatively harming sales. Which, TBH, I am 100% not sympathetic towards. Review embargos any more restrictive than a week prior to launch is just trying to hide something.
What’s your source on this? Even if Bethesda had any idle hands during the development of Starfield, it already has another huge project coming down the pike in Elder Scrolls 6. Why would it fire off developers who are already familiar with the revised engine that it needs to make another massive open world game?
I’ve worked in the games industry for 10 years, this has been a rumor about release layoffs. It doesn’t happen if the studio can prevent it. You typically don’t lay off a huge team if you can avoid it, even if the game did terribly. A terrible game is a learning opportunity and if you just lay everyone off then everything they learned during that game is lost knowledge. You’ll never make a profitable studio filled with experts in their craft if you lay people off after every release. Even small studios have another project going so when they near release they don’t have idle hands.
So, this rumor comes from a couple of places. 1) At the release of a project a lot of people will quit. This is usually because they are fed up with the studio or the studio’s next project doesn’t interest them. 2) Smaller studios during the indie boom assumed that they’d get paid on release. This has changed but before, the release was an unpaid publisher milestone. Some indie studios assumed this to mean they’d get profits on release which also isn’t the case because the publisher typically takes 80% to 100% (usually 100% if you are small) of the profits until they recoup all the money they spent during development. So the studio goes unpaid for 1-6 months or longer. They then are forced to lay off their team because they can’t pay them even if the game does well. There are delays in payments from Storefronts, Publishers, etc. when it comes to these things, and when smaller studios forget that, they lose people. So sometimes now, people write into the publisher contract that release is a paid milestone or they go for DLC milestones or they start another project nearing release and hope to get it funded and move the team over.
Overall, no large studio lays off a whole team on the verge of release if they can avoid it. It doesn’t make sense and it’s a myth.
in many big gaming companies majority of the dev teams are let go on release, they operate on a hire-and-fire cycle
This is absolutely no longer the case. I’ve worked in the industry for 10 years and have never seen a team release then get laid off. Imagine any other business working this way. It just doesn’t make sense. In some cases though, smaller studios miscalculate how long between publisher funding and release income. You get money from a publisher to make a game, then you release and for a while, a lot of studios made the mistake that the release income would come immediately. Publishers have clauses in their contracts to recoup all the money they gave the studio with the release money. So the studios assume they’ll make money the first month of release and realistically depending on the publishing contract, that’s not the case all of the time. So they are forced to lay off people. In larger studios though, this is never the case.
To put it in business terms, imagine your restaurant staff just served one of the best dishes they could to a well-known reviewer and got rated well. Do you think that business is going to lay off their kitchen staff or do you think they’ll try to keep the team together and make another dish? It doesn’t make sense for them to lay off people and never has. It doesn’t happen if the studio can avoid it. Even when games completely tank, I’ve only seen people quit because of studio frustrations, not laid off.
This is factually untrue. Artists have already been paid for their work and have possibly already been let go.
A lot of studios still give profit sharing and bonuses to those who worked on high-profile projects. Also no, again, they don’t just get let go. They at most get moved to other projects. That’s why there are people at Bethesda/Epic/Ubisoft/etc who have worked there for decades.
At worst this is Bethesda having 150 copies stolen. Not even tiny devs would blink at that as they get copies stolen through places like G2A constantly.
Hi, I am a tiny dev and I constantly fight against G2A and other shitty websites that steal from me. I am not alone and multiple studios have straight up come out against G2A. I am one who will say instead of buying something off of G2A, just email me for a Steam key. I’d rather give away my product than see G2A profit from it. Larger developers clearly care as they have pressed charges against people who pirate. Saying no developer cares is ignoring the entire discourse of developers on the subject.
As a developer myself, I just find it funny as fuck that people just spout off about shit like this. clearly do not understand what they are talking about.
Imagine the support nightmare alone if the dev team is dismissed on release. For example, Baldur’s gate just released 1000+ bugfix patch 20-some days after release, good luck doing that with a brand new team.
Especially today with things like day1/week1 patches which have become the usual almost, cutting the dev team loose on release would just be wild from any informed perspective
As far as I understand Bethesda have actually got a relatively small team for the size of games they make but it’s made up of lots of people who have been there for a long time so they have a good knowledge base with less people, rather than just brute forcing it by throwing 5000 people at a game like Ubisoft. Also we have no way of knowing what their contacts with Zenimax/MS say about sales bonuses.
While what you say is absolutely correct, keep in mind that the profits a game makes go to the company. The workers are already paid. If a game doesn’t make money it would likely mean those people at the bottom would lose their jobs but the people at the top will absolutely get their share. But stealing a game like this doesn’t mean people aren’t getting paid. If Bethesda feels like the game doesn’t need all of the staff it took to make it, they’ll still get rid of them, regardless of how popular the game may be doing at any given time.
Indie game studios stand a better chance at doing right by their employees but a capitalist society means the profits go to the top and the losses go to the bottom and rarely are indie studios exempt from this rule of economics.
This person is being punished because they found a weakness in Bethesda’s setup and exploited it. It MIGHT be that if they had gone to Bethesda and let them know of this vulnerability rather than trying to sell what they had found that they would be been rewarded. But, more often than not, the companies who are shown a vulnerability still seek to punish those who point it out to them.
You know Bethesda have other projects in the works that their staff probably moved too. Fallout 4 is getting a next gen patch and ES6 is in pre-production.
Except for bonuses, profit sharing, and things that rely on the profits of the company.
If a game doesn’t make money it would likely mean those people at the bottom would lose their jobs but the people at the top will absolutely get their share.
Which certainly equates to someone stealing as someone endangering or even costing the jobs of artists.
If Bethesda feels like the game doesn’t need all of the staff it took to make it, they’ll still get rid of them, regardless of how popular the game may be doing at any given time.
Sure, just like any company. This is true for any business. It’s hard to keep people employed that you don’t need. I don’t see how this relates to artists getting paid.
Indie game studios stand a better chance at doing right by their employees but a capitalist society means the profits go to the top and the losses go to the bottom and rarely are indie studios exempt from this rule of economics.
Highly depends on the studio. I’ve seen the heads of indie studios get less profits than the rest of the team. That said a lot of indie studios are also more partnerships so there aren’t really “ones at the top”. Of course, again, it depends on the studio, but it’s good to remember there are lots of exceptions to this rule out there.
This person is being punished because they found a weakness in Bethesda’s setup and exploited it.
Yes, good. If I found a weakness in whatever you do and was able to profit off of your work instead of you, you’d find that wrong, right? It’s like glorifying this: www.youtube.com/watch?v=TM2R5xV3bbY
Dude, whatever, that’s still money being taken away from the artists. That’s a weak ass argument that it’s “just extra money.” I’m going to bet the answer to my question is you would find it wrong if people stole from you.
bad, what could possibly justify someone being arrested over something like this? and the only one who could “deny pay” is the bosses anyway, game devs don’t get any sort of cut from profits.
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