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Bungie says it’s reduced communication with players due to ‘real threats’ towards staff

I can't take these things at face value, especially these days. I feel like companies use alleged "harassment" as a way to avoid any form of scrutiny. It's the perfect tactic, because almost everybody instantly shuts up and starts taking pity on the company and/or trying to white knight for a corporation. "Influencers" and "Journalists" pounce on the opportunity to create a picture of horrible, no good gamers being awful human beings without the need of proof to back it up. It is just instantly assumed that these bad people exist in huge numbers and are the norm.

That's all it takes these days, just claim that you are being "harassed" without providing any evidence, and you are able to get away with the shadiest shit.
 

Shubh_C63

Member
Destiny playerbase is possibly most mature audience I have seen. This is sad.

But not too much was lost. Bungie's communication to playerbase amounts to nothing because they still do what they want.
 

Kamina

Golden Boy
The question is, are we talking about some retard that wrote something along the lines of:
You suck for being bought by Sony, get fucked, kill yourself or I will.

…, or are we talking about something like this:
„I am going to kill *insert devs by names*, you better prepare.

The first is just brainless people raging.
The second should be taken seriously. I highly doubt they received the second type though.
 
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They made some controversial political statements in the near past, so of course some deranged people will send death threats. They should've seen it coming tbh.
 
Players are douchebags, period. I don’t know how anyone wants to create games for such a shitty audience that pisses and moans about everything - some even sending death threats.

Grow the fuck up.
It's total nonsense to group all "gamers" in like everyone sends anonymous Twitter threats. That's like 0.1% of gamers globally who do that crap. Stop acting like everyone who games is a degenerate.
 
like they ever listened to players anyway. this is just an excuse to keep going with their bullshit. "we tried talking to you but you upset us so we don't want to talk to you anymore!" bloody pathetic and immature.
Yes, Bungie has been treating the Destiny player base like garbage for the past 8 years. Sorry if I'm not going to shed any tears for their vague "threats". They talk down to their players more than any other studio.
 

Bernardougf

Member
Could just be the case of "our employees cant engage on social media whitout talking social political bullshit and arguing with the fans so we decided to shut their fn mouths"

The harassment card is all to common, people made use of that so mutch in recent years that nowdays I just cant believe without some kind of proof.
 

The_Mike

I cry about SonyGaf from my chair in Redmond, WA
They're the most valuable employees in the industry by far so I can see why they wouldn't take any chances. $1.2 Billion of the $4 Billion Sony paid was explicitly toward employee retention contracts.
Yeah Bungie is among the very best.

I really hope other devs will copy their business model, so other starts stealing the dlc you already bought and make it unavailable to the paid customer.

That's some top tier quality.
 

jigglet

Banned
I find it hard to believe they are "real". Not real as in the threat never happened, but as in people would actually act out on them. Very, very few are going to risk serious jail time for a video game.

Grow a pair of fucking balls, words are just words.

Also: social media is full of vermin. I've resisted setting up any social media accounts for 20 years. Why is it some people feel compelled to partake. Just back off from it. My level of social media anxiety = 0.
 
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Star-Lord

Member
found the problem
Yeah, we have. This attitude is the problem. History has shown that threats that went ignored went on to become harsh realities. What's Bungie supposed to do? Just ignore them? What happens when one gamer takes it too far, shows up at an employee's house, and actually carries out the threat they made?

Some people have some serious growing up to do.
 

nush

Member
I find it hard to believe they are "real". Not real as in the threat never happened, but as in people would actually act out on them. Very, very few are going to risk serious jail time for a video game.

Grow a pair of fucking balls, words are just words.

Real enough to go to the police? No, didn't think so.
 
Remember when E3 leaked the addresses of 2000+ journalists? IF there was a time when the whole "death threat" thing MIGHT have resulted in something bad, it would have been that moment. But instead, nothing happened. Maybe some folks got a few unsolicited pizzas but actual attempts on their lives? Bitch, please. Journalists and game developers think far too highly of themselves these days.
 

Kokoloko85

Member
Destiny had quite a good userbase.
Maybe don’t shit on players by taking away content they have paid for… Thats why I didn’t bother with Destiny 2
 
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cormack12

Gold Member
The problem is separating professional communication from social media bullshit.

There are assholes on social media. Some of them play videogames. That's not a reason/excuse to stop giving updates to the millions of players. Once again a minority being used as the benchmark for the majority.

Seems like an easy excuse to hide behind for a genuine problem they have.
 

Warnen

Don't pass gaas, it is your Destiny!
I got mad when they started to delete paid content but worse I did was send a sarcastic tweet about getting a refund on old stuff too.

Of course bungie tends to over share there political beliefs so I’m sure that’s gonna piss off some nuts. Sometime it’s better to do then instead of talk.
 
Yeah, we have. This attitude is the problem. History has shown that threats that went ignored went on to become harsh realities. What's Bungie supposed to do? Just ignore them? What happens when one gamer takes it too far, shows up at an employee's house, and actually carries out the threat they made?

Some people have some serious growing up to do.
Tell me one time that a "gamer" showed up at a dev's house to commit violence. Seriously, there was one incident in Japan where someone showed up to an office, but there's never been a single example of a player storming into someone's home. It's a BS argument, and no one should be taking Twitter threats seriously. If you do, then you are delusional. I've had people threaten me over some youtube videos, but I never once expected anyone to show up to my house.
 

SmokedMeat

Gamer™
It's total nonsense to group all "gamers" in like everyone sends anonymous Twitter threats. That's like 0.1% of gamers globally who do that crap. Stop acting like everyone who games is a degenerate.

0.1% my ass. Go on any social media platform and the replies to any gaming related post are mostly trash. Go online and it’s impossible not to run into trash.

Gamers are largely immature garbage, because they can hide behind a keyboard. Don’t downplay it like it’s not a big issue. Developers can’t even talk about their games anymore without having to deal with gamer drama bullshit.
 

VN1X

Banned
To be honest, while genuine threats are awful to say the least... Don't they realize that these are coming from The Gamer Crowd(tm)? Half of our community can barely fix something around the house, let alone follow through on an actual threat to someone or their property.

Now that's not to say they should just take it. People who pose a genuine risk or go out of their way to harass others should be dealt with accordingly but personally I think all these types of "real threats" are always overblown, especially as they form an extreme minority of attention devs give and get.
 
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Lady Jane

Banned
They’ve been having poor communication since Reach and now they’re using the modern excuse of cherry picking on social media to have sympathy for poor community interaction.

It’s like Sony gave Bungie the same playbook that they gave Santa Monica too.
 
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Bo_Hazem

Banned
Have any of gamers threats came to fruition before? All I know is those nerd gamers are all talk so calling them "threats" is a bit of an exaggeration.
 
0.1% my ass. Go on any social media platform and the replies to any gaming related post are mostly trash. Go online and it’s impossible not to run into trash.

Gamers are largely immature garbage, because they can hide behind a keyboard. Don’t downplay it like it’s not a big issue. Developers can’t even talk about their games anymore without having to deal with gamer drama bullshit.
There's literally hundreds of millions of people who game. Yes, I'm saying that only 1 out of every 1000 people are stupid enough to be leaving Twitter threats. It's total nonsense to act like the vast majority of gamers are just immature assholes who leave death threats. Give me a break.
 

Guilty_AI

Member
Yeah, we have. This attitude is the problem. History has shown that threats that went ignored went on to become harsh realities. What's Bungie supposed to do? Just ignore them? What happens when one gamer takes it too far, shows up at an employee's house, and actually carries out the threat they made?

Some people have some serious growing up to do.
explain to me in detail how scaling back communications prevents something like this from happening.
 
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ToTTenTranz

Banned
It really is a shame that the harassment card has been so used and abused in this industry that we can't really tell if bungie's employees were actually targeted and they're afraid or this was conveniently placed to get social /mainstream media pity points and excuse poor performance in the process.
 
This is just an excuse, a poor one at that. Anyone honestly trying to defend this and claim that “gamers” are bad are so out of touch with reality it isn’t even comedic. Not to mention the irony of them, many being here for years, posting on a GAMING FORUM. Its like they got a lobotomy at some point.
 

Guilty_AI

Member
It really is a shame that the harassment card has been so used and abused in this industry that we can't really tell if bungie's employees were actually targeted and they're afraid or this was conveniently placed to get social /mainstream media pity points and excuse poor performance in the process.
About every industry out there, especially software development ones, put a lot of thought into costumer feedback, developing entire systems and processes around it. It always amazed me how gaming seems to be about the only one thats so quick to dismiss said feedback, no wonder the industry feels so fucked.
 
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Destiny attracts the same dorks Smite and Blizzard games do. These overly obsessive gamers that’ll complain like a bitch instead of playing the game.
 

Kamina

Golden Boy
Gamers are largely immature garbage, because they can hide behind a keyboard. Don’t downplay it like it’s not a big issue.
Nonsense. There are hundreds of millions of people playing videogames on the planet. What you are describing is just any form of internet troll ever and pretty much just an idiotic vocal minority.
 

HAYA8U5A

Member
EA use this excuse all the time too. While I don't doubt there are people that do this it is still a cop out to not engage with the community and listen to community feedback because a very, very, very, very, very small percent of the community that don't represent it might have crossed a line. Not to mention these trolls just get empowered if they think they have the power over developers like this.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Video game companies should be communicating less anyway as far as I'm concerned. Why do players these days feel these companies need to be their friends? All I care about hearing from Bungie (and any dev) are game/dlc/patch announcements, trailers, and release dates. I couldn't give a shit less what they have to say about social issues and how they want to respond to every whiny complaint from reddit.
Because video game companies need this social interaction. It's one part the nature of creative types and one part marketing. Also, a lot of gamers feel the need to interact with game companies too like they are best friends. And the reason they do this is because devs respond to them where gamers probably think that a video game maker responding to their tweet is akin to Margot Robbie sending you a personal text message saying she wants to suck your sausage.

So what happens is you got two sides talking (devs and PR community dudes and gamers) and just like YT videos, you got a % of the population goofing and trolling with dickish comments.

Some companies dont give a shit. Some do and shut down or slow down interacting. Bungie has taken #2.
 
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93xfan

Banned
At least one angry fan was sending them messages that he knows where their staff live and he is also close to their office in threats.

I can't blame them, no one deserves to have this kind of bullshit threats on them for no reason.
Wish people like that were just thrown in jail for life. No possibility of parole.
 

JonSnowball

Member
Were gamers connected with developers during the 90s? 2000s? Feedback should be treated with a grain of salt.
Yes. IRC chats, Usenet, BBS', forums, and so on. I remember the "long, long ago" - the difference today is the prevalence of the Internet and instead of it being a forum full of fans talking shit and asking questions it's now social media engagement by anyone with a passing interest.

Oh, and "death threats" as the obvious new lightning rod to escape any actual feedback in the same way as "they're bigots" is how to escape any constructive criticism of a character or story in a modern game the likes of which was most recently exploited by the GTA 6 rumors that featured mentions of Rockstar shifting their writing style to be more welcoming and not "punch down". The response to this from the usual suspects and communities was less that people think that's not what Grand Theft Auto is, nor has it every been, and instead decided that the issue people had was that it's rumored that one of the protagonists is a woman. It's a nice distraction from genuine criticism, and it's used more and more often. "This isn't accurate to the source material!", "You're saying You hate it because one of the main characters is Arabic. You are racist."

We live in the age of spin and corporations will intentionally distort the reality of the situation or focus on an adolescent on Twitter sending a 'death threat' that consists of "dis game company dum as fuk i hope all devs dye lmao". It's utterly pathetic.
 
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StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Yes. IRC chats, Usenet, BBS', forums, and so on. I remember the "long, long ago" - the difference today is the prevalence of the Internet and instead of it being a forum full of fans talking shit and asking questions it's now social media engagement by anyone with a passing interest.

Oh, and "death threats" as the obvious new lightning rod to escape any actual feedback in the same way as "they're bigots" is how to escape any constructive criticism of a character or story in a modern game the likes of which was most recently exploited by the GTA 6 rumors that featured mentions of Rockstar shifting their writing style to be more welcoming and not "punch down". The response to this from the usual suspects and communities was less that people think that's not what Grand Theft Auto is, nor has it every been, and instead decided that the issue people had was that it's rumored that one of the protagonists is a woman. It's a nice distraction from genuine criticism, and it's used more and more often. "This isn't accurate to the source material!", "You're saying You hate it because one of the main characters is Arabic. You are racist."

We live in the age of spin and corporations will intentionally distort the reality of the situation or focus on an adolescent on Twitter sending a 'death threat' that consists of "dis game company dum as fuk i hope all devs dye lmao". It's utterly pathetic.
All this comes from a snowball effect of devs, gamers, politics, and the constant churn of feedback each side has to do.

Now if you contrast that with a company that makes soap, I'm sure the company has a website or twitter page promoting the company or brand. You dont get any corporate politics, you get the PR person talking business and promotions. You dont get people trolling, you get customers who might have a real concern like the product sucks. You don't get the PR person running away, you get an answer. You don't get employees doing public Twitter battles with bosses, you get a handful of PR or marketing managers handling it all.

There's no political escape anyone can do when it involves selling soap or floor cleaner. So you get a straight answer.

Even if you get some weird people cussing and trolling threats, you get blocked users. You dont have the PR person shutting down responses.
 
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