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@Bookie: Hmmm… not sure where I got the $40k number from, for some reason that's the one that was in my memory. Whoops.

@Garde:

Vice: Hahaha, the article says "the business posted a surprise decline in web traffic." Not very surprising at all after they joined the chorus of attacking their own readers. Smh.

Gawker: The ship is sinking! The ship is sinking! The captain goes down with the crew, brother!

EDIT: Onward, to page 34!

It's STARTING AGAIN!!!

Blizzard, of all companies, has caved unto the cries of the wretched.

Would it be very wrong if I insist we should amp up the fight and kick SJWs from the insudtry once and for all?

No, it would not. Though possible, it would be very difficult, time consuming, and would require a lot of tough decisions.

Boycotts, changes in votes, abandoning campuses, a gratuitous amount of info/history digging, greater pushes online, a major Tumblr and/or Twitter occupation… It will basically require a GamerGate 2.0.

Yeah, no. If you want to point out stuff like this and use it to show how some of this stuff is stupid and silly, then go for it, but kicking people out just sounds too tall of a task (plus I'm not interested in something like that since it sounds wrong). And hey, they do a decent job ruining their own careers, it seems, so why bother?

Remember what happened when they were left alone? They were allowed to fester and spread, slowly infecting every aspect of society they could get their corrupt hands in.

As nuts as it sounds, they must be completely expunged. We would never be able to change them all, or even any of them. I'm not suggesting a "re-education" type scenario (God forbid it), but their influence can be removed.

They must be relegated as the racist, bigoted, amoral wretches that they are. Then nature will take its course.

I thought nature's course would automatically remove them. I mean those people are already unprofitable and contribute negatively to the workplace and company as a whole. They're going to lose their jobs sooner or later.

If anything the current backlash and the seemingly inevitable removal of all these social justice injecting socio-paths seems exactly what nature would have done anyway. I'm pretty sure this is nature in action. If you live life by a dumb moral code of deception of double standards, you're going to get screwed by people who won't put up with deception.

You are absolutely right.

However, even those who are not wholly infected are still bending to their whims, or too afraid of speaking out for fear of being attacked. Worse still, there are many who cater to them because they depend on them and their antics for votes, and they're all too willing to turn a blind eye to whatever Hell these people raise and anyone who gets hurt in the process. They mercilessly harass their opponents and their supporters, after all.

The corruption runs deep. REALLY deep. So long as their BS is being taught in schools as fact, and laws are being made to accommodate their amoral beliefs, there will never be any end to it.

Now expelling everything is more or less impossible. There will always be those dingbat professors, there will always be those godless politicians, there will always be that crazy fat chick with the blue hair. That's life; we have to put up with that crap.

But some of the more severe damage has a chance of being reversed. We can oust them from entertainment. We can encourage/force media to report what actually happens rather than whatever spin is wanted to push some agenda. We can distance their supporters. We can sack their politicians.

It would be difficult to do all at once. Ideally, targets would be made but… eh, that seems a little too much like their own tactics. That's part of the problem, not stooping to their level. Ethical conduct would be paramount. Mostly.

This perfectly illustrates the abject stupidity these people live in.

What a miserable existence. How could someone live like that?

I just wish I, a tiny speck of dust in the vast universe could have some impact. If it was in my hands censorship would never happen in video games at all.

But I can't do a bloody thing. I share information on social media and discuss here, but in the case of my contacts, one or two cares, the rest don't give a flying fuck because they are not affected or know jack shit about it.

I am growing desperate, in the 90s I thought the fall of people such as Jack Thompson would mean the end of all censorship, and we were slowly recovering from that.

I watched a rerun of a 2007 documentary about video games and the people in the documentary, including video game journalists at the time spoke in a very neutral tone toward controversial topics and there was a clear anti censorship stance on most of the people in the documentary and a neutral stance on the rest.

There was hope for free speech, but just 5 years later things went down the toilet. Anita Sarkeesian brought her stupid "Tropes vs Women" series and since then censorship grew stronger, hope is withering away. I don't know what to do, I don't want censorship to be as bad as it was in the NES and SNES era or even worse. I don't want to see the death of an industry that brought joy to people for decades. There must be something we can do, there must be something I can do to change the outcome.

If only I could stop them, if only I could do something. I feel so powerless, every time a developer caves in, every time a localization team alters a game, I feel pain, I feel powerless, I feel idiots ruinen the industry my sister and I aspire to be part of before we could even start.

I must face it, I have grown hateful, maybe as hateful as SJWs claim we are. But not hateful toward women, or homosexuals, or any other "protected" group. No, I have grown hateful toward them. I hate SJWs, I hate them with a lot of passion. I hate them because I tried to listen to them and I listened to lies which damaged my interaction with other, specially with my fellow males, I hate them because they try to destroy all that I love, I hate them because I listened to their dating advice and it just made me a loser, I hate them because I tried to be their friend only to be stabbed in the back at the first sign of dissent, I hate them because I tried to ignore them and they kept on causing harm, I hate them because the lies they spread harm others and destroy social interaction, I hate them because they are one of the causes of the hardships in my life I can't control and I did not cause (Which just as in any average human being in a third world country are like 70% of my problems). I hate them because they do no good. I AM filled with hate and contempt toward them. I don't want them to shape the world I will live in.

And it's funny, after they submitted it turns out the vast majority of people in that "ban this pose thx" thread were on the side of "don't change it", the forums for Overwatch (only available to people in the closed Beta) are on fire with shitposting & "fuck SJWs", the /r/Overwatch subreddit is calling it out, and Twitter is eating them alive (Check Ian Cheong's timeline).

In the end it looks like they pissed off a massive amount of people (I've seen something like 10 people deciding to cancel their preorder) and achieved nothing beyond marking themselves as easy targets for the next wave of SJWs.

Update Look at how many upvotes a petition to reinstate the pose got on /r/Overwatch.

They're not going to make up those sales with people offended that asses exist.

@AlarkozTheAncient

Doing what's right is a never-ending battle, there's always going to be some authoritarian little shit who thinks they're better then everyone else & they can force everyone to obey them.

They never last, and every time they get beaten back again the world gets just a little bit better.

The price of liberty is eternal vigilance but the longer that price is paid the easier it gets to pay.

Compare today to even just 30 years ago, the Soviet Union still stood, the Christian fundies were burning books across America, and the first wave of PC madness was getting started.

Now? The USSR is gone, the Religious Right is on its deathbed in America, and the second wave of PC madness is falling apart in full view of the world.

And that's how it goes, each spin of the wheel a little bit better, a little bit more progress made, a little bit more ground covered.

SJWs might have realized things aren't as easy as they used to be for them, but what they haven't realized is that time is almost up for them.

And that's a comforting thought.

And the justice just keep on comming

The difference is, we have results

The difference is, we have results

FFS Blizzard.

Here we go, I'm surprised nobody has had time to make this.

It's the most useless outrage ever! Yay! (This is getting ridiculous)

Name one thing that outrage hysteria culture has actually helped society with? Because these are the kind of achievements that you are expecting gamergaters to actually acknowledge.

We also have facts, logic, reality, and God on our side.

"I can feel the wedgie…"

You know, that's something that gets me about their excuse for why they removed the pose. If she isn't meant to be "sexy", why did they have wear a skin tight bodysuit? I mean, at least make sure your character design reasoning is cohesive, jeez.

Hey I found a song that has some pretty relevant lyrics, despite its age :)

In particular listen to the first and third verses, they have a lot of symbolism about censorship and today's mob justice. Ignore the cheesy thumbnail, the song is quite good, I promise.

Also about Overwatch, while I might agree with the person that the pose doesn't quite match up with the character, it is quite obvious that they are using that as a flimsy excuse to justify their outrage at something deemed 'unfeminist'.

Frankly removing the skin is a poor decision, but I partially understand why Blizzard would do it.

They were backed into a corner, and would be unable to refuse her request without coming off as callous to their fanbase. Make no mistake, they did this because of the P.R. implications.

That's the problem, though. It was 1 person who is not representative of the fanbase.

If they were callous to one person, it's because that one person was a twit and their opinions were crap.

@Dioxin Jimmy: True, but it would still affect their reputation that way. You've seen how fast the internet outrage machine works, they'd eat that up. People already are, and they gave in to it.

Basically they're damned if they do, and damned if they don't. The only difference is that the P.R. is slightly better if they do, and people learn that they can push these companies around.

So, where does GamerGate stand at the moment? Is it still going?

We're dead and done for. Our misogyny and bigotry really caught up to us.

Also true, but what's the rule?

Never give into these people. Never do anything to appease them. They are never happy with anything they're given. They will always, ALWAYS demand more.

Blizzard not caving into them would temporarily give them a bit of bad PR in a sector that has nothing to do with them, and even within its own context, is increasingly ineffectual and irrelevant.

Giving into the cries of SJWs/feminist/whatever-you-call-them only sets them up for more problems, manipulation and subversion in the future.

There is a little evidence that they had tried to appease the crybullies right from the get-go.

See what I mean? NEVER GOOD ENOUGH.

Replace Homer Simpson with Anita Sarkeesian.

Japanese gamers are pissed off because of SJWs.

Square Enix Gave Star Ocean 5’s Miki Bigger Panties in Fear of Western Criticism

Thank you. I was about to post that story.

Here's what I was going to post.

Okay, so how many of you guys have actually read the original post in that thread? 'Cause I've seen plenty of this kind of rhetoric before, but… wow. I mean, wow.

I have a young daughter that everyday when I wake up wants to watch the recall trailer again. She knows who tracer is, and as she grows up, she can grow up alongside these characters.

What I'm asking is that as you continue to add to the overwatch cast and investment elements, you double down on your commitment to create strong female characters. You've been doing a good job so far, but shipping with a tracer pose like this undermines so much of the good you've already done.

A single victory pose in a video game!?

This shit works.

Just… all the fucking question marks. All of them.

The best part about these "rebuttals" is that it's so obvious how the writer has taken no time to read what people are actually saying.

"people are too PC and overly offended these days!"

(image of people being angry)

And these things contradict because…

Alert me when "anti-PC" means that you think everyone should act like robots without emotions.

"well thought out argument"

That's a good one. "This one pose will crush my daughter's spirit, please change it." If only modern politics could rise to this level of high discourse, I tell ya!

"It's not like the game's director himself agreed."

Because pandering for PR isn't a thing that happens. When it's something I agree with, they're obviously being completely genuine!

Oh, and also alert me when "pro-creative freedom" means that you're never allowed to oppose a change that a game studio is making to their product.

It's really really sad that the game's director is behaving the way he is.

http://us.battle.net/forums/en/overwatch/topic/20743015583?page=11#post-210

It's so obvious he is lying through his teeth. All he's given are PR canned responses including the "we all agreed with the decision and it didn't suit her character" bullshit.

Let's take a look more closely:

"That the pose had been called into question from an appropriateness standpoint by players"
Players with an s? You mean that one guy all the outlets are claiming is a mother when its actually a guy?
http://us.battle.net/forums/en/overwatch/topic/20743015583?page=18#343
I believe you meant to use the word player.

"We actually already have an alternate pose that we love and we feel speaks more to the character of Tracer. We weren’t entirely happy with the original pose, it was always one that we wrestled with creatively. "
Really then, why bother saying you care about appropriateness and just say that in the first place? As a reminder this was the opening statement:

"We'll replace the pose. We want everyone to feel strong and heroic in our community. The last thing we want to do is make someone feel uncomfortable, under-appreciated or misrepresented.

Apologies and we'll continue to try to do better."

"We wouldn’t do anything to sacrifice our creative vision for Overwatch, and we’re not going to remove something solely because someone may take issue with it"

Except you're clearly going to give every impression that you have in fact done that.

"This wasn’t pandering or caving, though. This was the right call from our perspective, and we think the game will be just as fun the next time you play it."
Yes in no way should anyone be worried that you made an instant change over a single player feedback while ignoring the thousands who have given things that probably should have been looked at.
They're not very good liars are they?

Gotta love that image though, just project right on to your opposition. Pretend they're easily offended because a developer instantly does what a single player wanted while giving the shittiest response possible while its somehow a "reasonable well-thought argument" that a character shouldn't have a pose (that several other characters have already) because they have an ass. Let's also ignore the fact the argument hinges entirely on the poster's young daughter and carries a hefty amount of galbrush paradox (i.e a female can't have any perceived flaws of any kind or she's a danger to all women and children).

Yeah definitely don't bother to read the part where the dev's said it was because of perceived anti-sexuality in the west. The facts are for scrubs clearly.

Liana K. made an interesting video on this situation:

Also, I don't think anyone posted the video of the SavePoint panel at SXSW over a week ago:

I haven't watched it, yet, so I don't know what was said.

You're still ignoring the fact that a developer immediately worked to fix their problem while ignoring all other problems that include actual gameplay elements. In addition this is a pose in a multiplayer game that will be shown to other players when you win the game. This isn't some optional feature, if you are winning the game as Tracer you can no longer pick that pose so that other players can see it. I love how you pretend that a pose is so insignificant when it really is a gameplay feature and considering its a multiplayer title, poses and the looks of your character are very important.

Your argument also ignores the basic premise that any female character must be regulated to an extreme or people will hurt developers. It sends the message that a woman can either be sexy all the time or never.

And finally your argument ignores the most simple and key problem. The simple message the developers continue to send their customers is that they will listen to people who don't play their games and will lie and stir up fake controversy while people who actually care about the game and play it get ignored. The majority of the people who play overwatch are against the decision. The game is in a beta where player feedback is to be respected and catered to. What is the developer doing listening and immediately reacting to a single player's feedback while ignoring everyone else?

It's also not really a gamergate thing at all considering it has nothing to do with journalists. You're the one pretending its a full-on gamergate thing. Also you have the wrong definition of outrage culture. Outrage culture is what caused the loss of the pose, outrage culture is defined as taking offense to things that are not offensive. Gamers have every right to be offended at the premise that they cannot a pick a pose because one player found it offensive. Gamers have every right to be offended when they cannot pick a pose in a multiplayer game where its important that you make yourself look unique by picking cool poses and customizing your character to whatever extent possible. Gamers have every right to be offended that developer will go to extreme lengths to justify the poorly explained removal of a single item over a single complaint while their complaints are never addressed with such speed or frequency.

TL;DR the "it's insignificant argument" has the high tendency to demonstrate that person who used it fails to see a culture as a culture or people as people. If it is truly insignificant than backlash would not have this many people participating nor would it have the objectively verifiable majority clocking in on the issue in offense towards the developer's behaviour (including total biscuit, Overwatch's entire sub reddit, and all the way to here). The problem is very clear, the masses are ignored while an aristocratic liar gets what they want every time. We're living in the day and age where a rocket scientist can get fired over the complaints of 6 people while thousands are completely okay with him having his job. This may not be as serious but the trend is still being enforced and its by blizzard no less.

"Also, no, this isn’t the start of multiple censorships, thats what they said about the GTA 5 incident and nothing huge has happened since."

AHEM DOAX3. Fire EMBLEM FATES extremely massacred localization. These aren't years apart. There's game related censorship happening every month now.

@No Original Names Is a loser
"If this isn’t about Gatergatewho then why is it in the thread called “Gamer Gate Thread”? Why are people who frequently consider themselves “Pro-GamerGate” defending the act of keeping the pose? Should this thread just be renamed “anti-sjw general”?"
You are confusing gamergate the movement with gamergate the subject.

Gamergate the movement are the people who work under the banner gamergate.

Gamergate the subject refers to the ongoing assault on gamers by the media and social justice culture. Overwatch controversy falls in this category as a single player managed to screw over the entire player base using social justice themes.

You claim the movement is involved in ensuring that the pose is put back in the game. This is not the case as we have no way of knowing for sure that the majority of overwatch players are gamergate members. We do know for sure that the majority of overwatch players want the pose back or hate the change. I would love to see how you believe that gamergate is responsible for a completely natural reaction. Also would like to point out that you write "Gatergatewho" because clearly ignorance and being above the subject is a great way to convince others you're not full of it.

"Thats not what people are mad about here are they though? "
Yes they are, go ask them.

"I thought this was a gameplay problem."
No you said it wasn't a gameplay problem.

"This doesn’t hurt her character or make her any less significant."
Then why did you agree with the picture that said the pose hurt her character and made her less significant?

"The developer has the basic right to change a pose, sorry that its a dumb reason, you don’t know whats going through their heads, just accept it, its not the worse thing ever."
Who are you trying to convince? me or you?

"I thought you said this wasn’t about Gamer Gate, you’re giving me mixed messages."
I have never said this issue is about the gamergate movement as gamergaters are not involved in this. You are confusing yourself.

"By that logic you’re asking them to listen to the people who don’t play their games, or, I’m sorry, you somehow have a beta pass or got the game early by voodoo magic? "
I don't know if you can read but I have wrote many many times that majority of the people actually playing overwatch are against the change. You can see that by reading the forum posts in response to the change. You can see that in my post and when you write "by that logic" you mean by "no logic".

"Sorry you don’t like their ideas, but this in no way ruins the game or the developers, don’t make it out like it is."
When you don't have an argument make a chewbacca defense. It's not the game's or the dev's fault that they catered to the wrong people. You shouldn't react at all to the fact that you as a consumer got worse treatment than someone who isn't playing the game. It's also the developer's decision to file chapter 11 bankruptcy or start making movies and fast food franchises. I don't understand how its wrong to call a bad decision a bad decision. But then again you've done no real research on the subject and didn't even read my post properly. Your entire argument is based on failures of basic reality comprehension and being beyond addressing the actual subject at hand (which I've already stated by the way and your response was "well the dev can do whatever he wants"). Have you ever considered that your opinion is just your opinion and other people actually matter?

They worded it really weird. Like they genuinely only took the few minor complaints into consideration when they finally decided to change the pose.

They didn't express any problems with it till the forum post.
The Beta tests have gone on for weeks with no issues.

If they had mentioned that they desired to change the pose early on, no one would care. I mean a few might complain but it wouldn't have caused a shitstorm of fire.

@No Original Names Is a loser
@unusedusername

Blizzard surrendering to 1 stupid person and a dozen other idiots trying to justify this while ignoring the thousands of people calling them on their shit is not going to end well for the company.

Look at how average people are reacting to this.

They think the censorship is stupid (and don't bother with "it's not censorship!", the word used does not change the fact the pose is being removed or the fact it's being removed for stupid reasons).

Do you honestly enjoy having to watch your every word to make sure you don't say something that is "circle-jerky" or "outrage culture" or anything else that would indicate you're not some too-cool-to-care above-it-all hipster?

Do you ever wonder what happened to your live that you ended up spending your time defending a stupid decision by an out-of-touch dev on the forums of an internet meme library?

The average person doesn't care about your specific definition of censorship, or how much you totes don't care. The average person sees that "this offends me, remove for the children thx" post and thinks it's stupid political correctness gone mad, then they see Blizzard bowing to that and are disgusted by how weak they are.

Escapist promptly added disclosure when conflict of interest regarding Andrea Rene came out.

OK, that is it. I am tired. I have been planning on a project for a few years now (Coincidence it was a few months GamerGate started) and now I have decided I must trigger even some of you with it. I was planning to make the main characters a couple with age difference (girl aged 13 guy in his early twenties around 20 to 22, I can't decide) and make the game mildly suggestive even with the loli character. But now I feel more an more compelled to go full Oshima Yuki and take it to a new level, with loli frontal nudity, whether partial or full. And I don't really want to, panty shots were my self established limit at the time of inception, but the more censorship I see the more compelled I feel to do something that would bring disaster.

As long as you're comfortable with more potential outrage/fallout.
I have no power or reason to police you on your decision, while I may have initial qualms in terms of morality, however there's nothing legally wrong, and my thoughts are my own. (I might be misinformed on legality, but I don't think any one can really restrict you on your own creativity.)

Begin side topic
That said, since you've changed the subject to games of personal development that may spark personal outrage. I was thinking of taking a game idea from the Tumblr side of the internet and give it life for giggles/an exploration into the making games process. There was an idea floating around about a 1950's style zombie game where the men have come back from WWII and are suffering an adverse effect that has turned them to zombies. So it's up to your female self and your 50's housewife friends to survive the zombie apocolypse, Rosie the Riviter style.

But I was thinking of taking it a step further. Which is to add a man mode. Since the serum can be passed on to the males via bite (women are not affected according to the source material) it means that you as a male who was either in training (doomed to go feral, but the serum's adverse effects haven't shown up yet), managed to avoid the draft (Hard mode) or had an inverse effect to the serum (antibodies. just like a housewife but you can use firearms instead of hatchets, wrenches, frying pans, heavy purses… but because you're weakened you take double damage. Similar to the higher difficulty of Doom and Wolfenstein)

The main reason of exploration into the zombie shooter genre is to make a game that's just an "A game" somewhere between the Current feminism indie vibe and the AAA clones we're getting. The worst of both worlds combined in some sort of satire. (I'll be using the Cryengine to build this thing since I gave humble bundle some money for assets.)

More than likely it's already dead in terms of time and effort to turn it into a reality.
End side topic
Anyway to change the topic again.

On a somewhat related note, notch has been stating some otherthink to the overwatch contraversy (Give everyone that over the shoulder pose) and as a result journalists are unwatching him. (Sadly its all twitter drama so… we'll see if it bites anyone in the butt later.)

You wouldn't even need to have nudity in it for them to freak out. Your character pairing is already 'problematic' enough, lol.

I personally would advise not doing that, as that is something that could go as a black mark against you for future employers, if they do a google search of your name and find out you made that. It's a tad risky. Plus nudity as a feature in games is already super niche, you throw in loli, and nobody's going to play it.

Do what you feel is important, though. Maybe take an alternate route and have a sly piece of commentary in it about how censorship is bad. These are just some ideas: what you do is entirely your decision, do what you feel is right.