So this article expresses some of the reasons for my decisions to stop directly boycotting Overwatch and Borderlands -- two different games from two different companies, and different controversies, to be sure, but both unpleasant. (Yes, the article is about Blizzard, but the reasoning applies to my boycott of 2k/Gearbox as well.)
As the author points out, if I boycott the bad people, I’m also boycotting the good people.
But this has also left a kind of sour taste. I don’t enjoy playing the games quite as much as I used to. And so I’m also not spending the money I used to.
Overwatch: I stopped playing entirely for 13 months. It meant not enjoying the company of my Overwatch friends; it meant missing out on the event skins and emotes and so on. On the last day of each event I used to buy 50 loot boxes at a time and open them, hoping to find the skins I was missing, or accumulate enough in-game cash from the duplicates and cash drops to afford to buy them outright. (Once the event is over, I’ll lose the opportunity to acquire the skins and other items for a year, until the event repeats.) At $40 a pop (per 50 boxes, that is) and with two different accounts, that could add up quickly. I’d make jokes about “more money than brains” but the fact is that I could afford the cost. Besides the event skins, I also missed out on the release of their last new hero player character, Echo.
Eventually I started playing again on the theory that playing on their servers costs them money; if I don’t buy any loot boxes (or merchandise) then they’re losing money on me, but I’m still enjoying the game. Since then I’ve been playing more-or-less regularly, and watching the leagues, but I haven’t directly spent a single penny.
BL3: When they first announced it, I was ready to buy it in advance. I was almost literally waving my credit card and shouting “Take my money!” I fell in love with BL2 and have been waiting for years for something other than BL:PS, which was a real mixed bag. Then they said, no, we’re going to release it on Epic exclusively for six months; Steam players will have to wait or join Epic’s platform. I hesitated for a while before deciding how I felt about it. In the end I decided it wasn’t a deal-breaker, and got ready to sign up with Epic.
Then I started hearing the controversies. Some of the issues I had were with Randy Pitchford’s behavior; some were with how some of the voice actors had been treated. Though I think that was really Pitchford too. In the end, I decided to boycott the game for the time being, then reevaluate when it went on sale on Steam.
Six months later it was introduced on Steam and immediately went on sale. After some soul-searching I decided that I wanted to play games with my old friends again, that any point I’d tried to make either had been made or was long forgotten (or more likely, never noticed), and at least I wouldn’t be paying full price.
And there was also the other thing to consider, the one I started this posting with: if I burn down a city of people to punish one guy I don’t like, can I really claim a position of moral superiority? Not all the people who work for 2k or Gearbox or Activision are assholes. Do I punish them all indiscriminately?
Right. So. I did buy a copy of BL3 in the end, at discount. I’ve not bought any of the DLC. I’ve been playing OW but haven’t given them any money.
I’m not boycotting them any more, but I’m not not boycotting them, either.
Just a quick update, in case you were following: I did buy BL3 in the end, though as of this writing I have not bought any DLC, and I’ve played through three times so far (Amara, Moze (Torgue-only challenge), and Fl4k).
I still feel uneasy about it, but I’m not sure what difference it would have made not to at this point.
A few months ago I posted this and started a personal boycott of BL3. (The original link doesn’t work any more, so I provided some new ones in an edit at the top of my post.)
My resolve has weakened somewhat. Several friends have been playing the game since it released. It’s now on Steam. I’ve considered the possibility of waiting until it was on Steam and went on sale.
Well… it’s on Steam and it’s on sale. They put it on sale immediately at a 50% discount ($30), which certainly falls into my price point. This article argues against the boycott, or at least questions it:
Fact, is, I don’t think I’m hurting anybody by not buying it… which is the same reason I’m still playing the other games that I own and haven’t shut down my Blizzard account. Nobody cares.
One of my gaming friends has given me some updates about the game, so I know a little more about the player characters. Still don’t know if there’s any that I really care for, but if I play, I’ll probably start with the Siren.
Remember, I never did say that I’ll never play the game. I’m thinking about it.
'Every voice matters' unless there's renminbi to be had
Wow. Hmm.
I can boycott them by refusing to play on their platform. I haven’t been playing much anyway since I started playing 7 Days. But there’s no financial hurt there; I already own the game; they don’t charge an access fee; and I’ve stopped buying loot boxes.
I bought a ticket this past season that gave me enhanced access to their League games Twitch feeds, but that’s money already spent. I can refuse to buy it again this season... After that, I suppose not watching will deprive them of a trifling amount of ad revenue.
I’m boycotting Borderlands 3 because they’ve been hurting people. There, at least, I’m a dedicated fan who is withholding money. Here? At most I can refuse to play Overwatch, which will actually save them money, as their servers will have one less player. Not a lot of money, mind you. Even less than the hypothetical ad revenue. But playing Overwatch only to protest Blizzard seems counter-intuitive, and would likely leave a bad taste.
I dunno. I guess the best I can do is post a protest here. A small voice crying in an empty wilderness. But it’s all I can do.*
Lucky for me 7 Days Alpha 18 is out. That’ll keep me busy for a while.
*I realize that it’s not technically all I can do, but let’s assume I’m really not the activist type, and that I’d be really bad at it...
Catch up on everything we know about Borderlands 3's release date, setting, characters, and more
Updated 14 Mar 2020: The above link is broken. PC Gamer has gone on to the next thing; as of this update, clicking that will get you to an article about golden keys for the game. At least some other companies haven’t conveniently forgotten.
And then there’s the stuff about Supmatto getting shut down.
https://gamerant.com/borderlands-3-boycott-explain/
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-08-08-take-two-investigating-streamer-over-borderlands-3-leaks
https://www.newsweek.com/boycottborderlands3-trends-twitter-controversy-youtuber-supmatto-1453013
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-08-16-borderlands-3-youtubers-channel-disappears-amidst-take-two-investigation-over-leaks
Some of those are redundant, but hopefully it will preserve the information if other sites throw away history like PC Gamer did.
My original posting follows.
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Here’s why I’m not buying Borderlands 3. Not yet; possibly never.
TL;DR: Randy and his goons are hurting people and I’m not OK with that.
My stats: across all my accounts, according to Steam, I’ve got 323 hours playing the original Borderlands (including both the GOTY and the new Enhanced edition); 687 hours playing the Pre-Sequel; and a whopping 3413 hours on Borderlands 2. Total: 4413 hours playing the Borderlands franchise, not including a partial run-through of Tales of the Borderlands. (Nothing wrong with it per se; it’s just not the type of game I usually like to play, and I lost interest before I finished.)
(Why BL2 more than BL? Probably because I started with BL2, so that’s the one I love. I could go on about the details, but I think it boils down to familiarity. I think that typically happens to people who started on the first game: they prefer it because it’s where they started, and what they know. I can’t say that’s the only reason, or that it’s everybody’s reason, nor that all people who started with one cannot prefer the other. It’s just what I think happens typically. And it’s speculation, at that. So please don’t read more into it than is there.)
Needless to say I’m a little burned out Borderlands; but I’ll still be happy to play any of the (non-Tales -- which is single-player anyway) games with a friend, and I expect that I’ll probably be working on finishing my first BLE playthrough soon-ish, though I’ve been distracted by another game (7 Days to Die, in case you’ve not been following my blog. Which you probably haven’t; I don’t think anybody is).
So when they announced BL3 and said you’d be able to pre-purchase the super extra plus edition online and get some nifty exclusive skins, I already had my credit card out and drool all over the carpet before the echos died.
The first news came through: it wouldn’t be on Steam. It would be an exclusive on Epic for six months; after that, presumably it would show on Steam.
What the fuck?
I put my credit card down and mopped up the drool and considered their stated reasons and the ins and outs of this development, and decided I could live with it. They had their reasons, and the main one was money (of course; it always comes down to money). As long as it worked, and as long as it came back to Steam eventually, I would be OK. In fact I’d probably survive even if it was always on Epic. It’s not like I’m married to Steam or anything. And I’m on other platforms (at very least, Blizzard and Xbox). So after some soul searching I picked up my credit card and...
...now these aren’t necessarily in the correct order... ([edit] yeah, in fact, apparently Baker came first, then Eddings, and that’s just these two, though it’s possible I’d simply heard them out of order...)
...heard that David Eddings wasn’t doing Claptrap’s voice. According to him, he’d offered and been rebuffed. According to Randy Pitchford, they’d offered and he’d turned them down.
OK, well, he-said-she-said. Hard to know from the peanut gallery whose story was accurate, if either, or if it was something between or some third option. Still, it left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. David Eddings not doing Claptrap? That’s like, like, like Ted Cassidy not playing Lurch.
At least the Addams Family movies have an excuse, seeing as how Cassidy died in 1979. Anyway, I’m being silly. While I was hesitating some more, I heard that Troy Baker wouldn’t be playing Rhys -- and his story sounded a lot like Eddings’.
Two actors with essentially the same story? Once is happenstance; twice is enemy action? It’s certainly starting to look like a pattern. Either could be he-said-she-said, but each of the two lent credence to the other.
Still something I could live with. And then I started hearing controversies about Randy Pitchford.
Former Gearbox Lawyer Accuses CEO Randy Pitchford Of Taking Secret $12 Million Bonus
Claptrap voice actor accuses Randy Pitchford of assault
Then there’s the alleged USB stick of allegedly underage porn. Just type “Randy Pitchford controversy” into a search engine and stand well back.
Last month we started getting word about superfan Youtuber Supmatto having his channel shut down and having thugs appear on his doorstep and question him. After restoring his channel... they shut him down for good. Think what you will, but from what I can tell, he’d merely reported information given to him, and Take Two and 2K abused Youtube’s copyright system to deprive one of their biggest fans of a living. Even if they were in the right -- and that’s not clear -- there are a lot of ways they could have handled it better. Instead they went for the full nuclear option and did it the easy way (easy for them, that is -- didn’t take him to court, simply threw paperwork at Youtube) and threw physical intimidation on top of that.
So 2K and Take Two and Randy Pitchford are pissing me off, and from what I can see, pissing off a whole metric fuck-ton of other now-former fans of the franchise. I’m in good company, at least.
But even that isn’t all. There are two other personal reasons that I’ve been kind of ambivalent about BL3. One is that in a lot of ways, the content seems like... more of the same. I guess there’s always going to be a certain amount of that; it’s a continuation of a story that’s been running across ten years and four games which, yes, includes Tales. It’s set in the same universe and is based on the same characters. But each part of the franchise has been pretty decent at presenting fresh content. Yes, even the Pre-Sequel had a lot going for it, despite innumerable flaws. I have a lot of complaints about it, but I also think they came up with some cool stuff. And it advances the story.
Of course, I’ve not seen much, so maybe I’m just viewing this through a lens of disappointment. Don’t take that point too seriously.
The second and more important one is that, all I feel when I look at the new Vault Hunters is... detachment. Again, maybe I’ll feel more immersion and engagement when (and if) I start playing the game. But none of those Vault Hunters particularly appeals to me. I look at the four of them and feel no pull, no preference, no reason to pick any of them. No “Oh, that’s neat! I want to do that!” They almost seem like cardboard cutouts to me.
And now some more weirdness is happening. Borderlands 3 pre-order pulled from Epic Games store, and there are reports of the strange way 2k is handling the prerelease testing. Apparently they’ve discounted the crap out of the game... why? Are they hoping to bribe back all the former fans they’ve pissed off? Frankly, it looks like a desperation move, and attempts to manipulate me that way are much more likely to piss me off more than lure me back.
What’s this? One of the actors has apparently been abusing his girlfriend and... Pitchford just blows it off. *sigh* It just doesn’t end.
I won’t even address the microtransactions stuff and Pitchford’s gaff other than to say: as long as there’s no pay-to-win aspect (or even pay-to-shortcut), I don’t mind them. I’ve happily bought many skins in Payday 2 and Killing Floor, and weapons and skins in Team Fortress 2, and I own all the DLC for all the Borderlands games (multiple copies of most of it!). A lot of that is skin and head packs. And then there’s Overwatch. Some is direct (”Here’s some cash for that skin”) and some is indirect (”Here’s some cash for loot boxes, because dammit, I want those skins, and I have more money than brains”), but yeah... paid a lot of money over the years.
I’ve been saying that I would probably buy BL3 when it goes on sale on Steam. But now the question is... will I ever? BL3 may be the Alien³ of the Borderlands franchise for me; as far as I’m concerned, the Aliens franchise stopped after the second movie. I refuse to even watch the third or fourth. (Yes, I’ve watched Prometheus. More than once.) I may do the same here, refusing to acknowledge any legitimacy of Borderlands 3 and boycotting it completely.
We’ll see.
So, thank you, Randy Pitchford, for making the announcement of a new installment in what is arguably my favorite game ever into bitter, angry, ugly disappointment.
I’m on the horns of a dilemma, because I love the franchise, and some of my best and oldest gaming friends will be playing it while I sit on the sidelines. But what I’m seeing from the companies just makes me want to walk away.
I guess I didn’t want those exclusive skins that badly after all.
