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As the title suggests, over the last couple of days there's been an influx of doomer comments over the SKG petition. While it's fine to disagree, I'm finding it suspicious that there weren't comments like this posted a week or 2 ago

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[-] MisterNeon@lemmy.world 170 points 1 week ago

I haven't seen anyone here against it.

Ross got hit with some anonymous legal complaint so I wouldn't be surprised with astroturfing.

I'm also an American so I can't help.

[-] dinckelman@lemmy.world 20 points 1 week ago

The entire complaint was based on nothing too. They claimed he’s orchestrating some crazy financial scheme, and getting paid 6 digits from it, when he’s not only doing it for free, but can’t even participate in the initiative to begin with

[-] AtHeartEngineer@lemmy.world 12 points 1 week ago

If he helps bump the gaming industry in a better/healthier direction, he deserves 6 figures imo

[-] stoly@lemmy.world 114 points 1 week ago

Are people criticizing it? There is a certain critical mass that when something becomes popular enough a subset of the population will automatically oppose it.

[-] hoshikarakitaridia@lemmy.world 74 points 1 week ago

There's also a threshold where Industry Groups will start astroturfing. Especially when it comes to worker's rights or consumer's rights.

[-] a_jackal@pawb.social 16 points 1 week ago

It seems like it's a bit too late now to start astroturfing this though

[-] Dultas@lemmy.world 15 points 1 week ago

It's a fine line because if you do it too early you'll just add more attention to it. They probably predicted it would stall out.

[-] who@feddit.org 93 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I don't find the absence of criticism suspicious. The petition makes sense. It aims to solve a problem that affects many individuals and a significant part of human culture.

What I do find suspicious is the sudden emergence of criticism now that it looks like it might succeed. I smell astroturfing and media manipulation.

[-] mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 39 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

This is exactly my point for the post, though your take is better worded

[-] duchess@feddit.org 17 points 1 week ago

As the petition got more successful it became a bigger topic on here. Bigger topics draw more opinions.

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[-] Supervisor194@lemmy.world 64 points 1 week ago

Because it's about to affect big money so they sic their bots on it to shape public opinion and stomp it, like everything else.

[-] alessandro@lemmy.ca 53 points 1 week ago

One year ago, right at the beginning of the petition, PirateSoftware came out misreading the initiative by suggesting the idea the petition was about forcing indie developer to host their server, at their expense, forever and other stupid idea on this line. A fabricated these narrative to act as the typical popular youtubers that say endlessly: "this is st0pid, they are st0pid". The fabricated narrative confused other popular YouTubers with mixed feelings; and there was very little support. This assured PirateSoftware the first place on the youtube rankings when you search for "stop killing games", plus had lot of kids brainwashed into thinking " this is st0pid". This kind of criticism never went away completely, the were partially silenced by the very recent roaring as people understood correctly what it was actually about. As SKG keep hitting its milestone the angered roar did lowered, so now you can ear again the "this is st0pid" team

[-] Rakonat@lemmy.world 47 points 1 week ago

There's always been criticism but until now it's been low level insiders and nobodies like pirate software. And the reasons the publishers and big names that would be affected did SKGs didn't say or do anything until now because they didn't want to give it any oxygen. They were smart enough to ignore it because they knew if they said anything it'd rile up a shift storm. Which is exactly what Pirate Software did so he's probably got a lot of people on both sides pissed at him for being too narcissistic to shut up and let the movement die.

Now that it has enough signatures to be taken seriously you're going to see the fire hoses open up and a lot of misinformation spread about how the movement would make the gaming industry unviable for the current model. Now is the point where if you are an EU citizen that you write and call your representatives who would consider this issue and help write the law if it did pass on how important it would be to you personally to not allow game companies to revoke your ability to utilize a game you paid for.

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[-] Korkki@lemmy.ml 39 points 1 week ago

Does anyone else find it suspicious there wasn't any criticism on here about Stop Killing Games until after it hit 1.4M signatures?

Nobody here disagrees with any point of the petition. I signed it. Even if gaming companies were rushing to send shills to raid discussions they would have done it months ago and last places they would go astroturff for is this Kazakhstani anti-whaling forum. Especially when their target now is the Eu bureaucracy and MEPs. Where I might say they have not a bad chance of succeeding.

Kazakhstani

? Is lemmy.world hosted by Borat?

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[-] 4am@lemmy.zip 28 points 1 week ago

I’ve made some comments critical of how relentlessly PirateSoftware is being harassed and how annoying it is and how distracting from the actual movement it is.

Nothing wrong with the petition itself, and I haven’t noticed any negative astroturfing about it.

[-] EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 43 points 1 week ago

PirateSoftware is being harassed for a whole lot more than just his SKG misinformation campaign.

[-] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 13 points 1 week ago

Perhaps, but the most I've seen are some tenuous "evidence" about him being a little selfish in WoW, not finishing games, or using his dad's influence to land a job at Blizzard. Neither of those are particularly bad, and certainly don't warrant the negative attention he got. It really seems like people are looking for dirt just because they don't like his position on SKG.

Then again, I didn't hear about him until he came out against it, and I saw he defended Godot, which is pretty rad. That's the extent of my knowledge about him, other than the handful of hit pieces against him people posted here once he got negative attention.

I support SKG and don't think PirateSoftware is a bad dude. I say just let him be, and don't watch his content if you don't like it.

[-] CTDummy@aussie.zone 28 points 1 week ago

The SKG thing was just the latest L in the series he’s been collecting for a while now. Similar to his wow raid there was another MMO when his party wiped due to someone accidentally aggro’ing a mob. He did the usually “that was moronic, whoever did that is kicked from the raid, etc”. Then he reviews the footage showing it was him that aggro’d and completely 180s, saying the wipe wasn’t on him. As evidenced in his SKG video, guy is super happy saying nasty shit about people but cries toxicity when it’s reciprocated. Guy just can’t help himself. Has to be right on everything and when it’s proven he isn’t, either doubles down or just simply denies being wrong.

Even the wow roaching thing, it isn’t so much the raid but the demanding everyone listen to his side before talking over others when it’s their turn and then leaving before they can have there say and tripling down. I used to appreciate some of his content but given his pattern of behaviour, including bullying, the negative attention he’s gotten is pretty deserved.

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[-] EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 14 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

The WoW thing wasn’t about being selfish, it’s just one of a dozen or more incidents of him being a narcissistic bully who screws other people over and can’t take accountability for anything.

And nobody is giving him too much shit for simply being a nepo baby. The Blizzard thing is about him being a fraud who’s been caught repeatedly lying and misleading people about his credentials and work experience in order to appear like an expert. He uses his time at Blizzard like a magic wand to expel criticism, going so far as to misrepresent what he even did at Blizzard to appear like an authority when people criticize him.

The backlash against him has been well earned by bad behavior over a long period of time, most of which involves him treating other people poorly for his own benefit.

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[-] CaptPretentious@lemmy.world 13 points 1 week ago

The WoW things is the most well known, be he had a similar behavior in another game, Ashes of Creation i think. Doesn't take accountability for anything. Cannot say sorry.

There's also stuff coming out here cheated on his former wife. And then was a massive manipulative dick towards the person that he was cheating on with.

Or that all his previous credentials are fabricated. Like he doesn't like giving details what he's actually done in previous jobs. He'll just state that he works somewhere and then let you fill in the blank. Or passing off what someone else did at the job as his own.

In his own channel he purposely misrepresent the recent things about him. And coding Jesus actually put out a video showing that, when he tries to reach out immediately gets filtered and banned. But meanwhile Thor is telling people that all he had to do was try to reach out...

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[-] burgerpocalyse@lemmy.world 21 points 1 week ago

what right do you have to stop me from killling your games?

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[-] ZeroHora@lemmy.ml 21 points 1 week ago

Another bot paranoia...

Not every people that disagree with the norm is a bot. The petition got more popular recently, even some news outlet that has nothing to do with games started talking about it in my country in the last week, so has a high chance of a bunch of people that didn't read much about started to comment with their "protect the billionaires" reaction.

[-] ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca 18 points 1 week ago

I have posts being critical of it from over a year ago. I'd assume most people who have criticism don't leave a comment because it'll get you massively downvoted and your inbox will be flooded with angry replies.

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[-] Atomic@sh.itjust.works 17 points 1 week ago

Attention work both ways.

People who were not aware, now are. From all sides.

[-] RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world 15 points 1 week ago

Lemmy is way too small and insignificant for Industry Plants to be posting on here about SKG, if that is what you are implying.

[-] Doomsider@lemmy.world 26 points 1 week ago

Lol you are funny. Propaganda doesn't come here!

Industry shills will show up on a obscure message board that only a handful of people have ever seen. They are everywhere, they are here.

[-] Tangent5280@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago

It's so stupid to think that small message boards are spared; small boards are where they infest with the most enthusiasm; you infiltrate a hundred small boards, one grows into the mainstream and now you have a socmed in your control.

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[-] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 14 points 1 week ago

Why would they? Most people didn't know about the petition until a few weeks ago, and I think people are largely knee-jerk supporting their favorite streamer (in this case, PirateSoftware). I don't think there's a concerted effort here to kill it, just people coming out of the woodwork now that it got a lot of attention.

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[-] abbotsbury@lemmy.world 14 points 1 week ago

No, there was definitely some criticism before. Prior to this month, it wouldn't be unusual to hear people complain about how it would destroy the live service market and was therefore Bad Actually for games and game preservation

The topic getting much more mainstream just brought all those people with.

[-] Zwrt@lemmy.sdf.org 18 points 1 week ago

The implication that “games as a service” is somehow a positive for game preservation is its own kind of illiteracy.

[-] abbotsbury@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago

It makes sense if you are completely consumer-brained and only see it as "companies will make less (live service) games if they are forced to support them/let them be community supported"

Isn't that a win win tho? Less live service games?

The industry is already horrible to work in.

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[-] mojofrododojo@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago

so far the only legit critique I've seen is the uncertainty of what this will mean to indie devs - will they be forced to sign with publishers who can assist with compliance etc., what will compliance actually look like to small shops, etc.

I will say this: the vast majority of game devs feel the same way and want to be able to play the games we paid for as well. there's just a bit of fear of the unknown for small devs.

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[-] Red_October@lemmy.world 13 points 1 week ago

I think suspicious is the wrong word. Suspicious seems to suggest doubt or a lack of certainty, but the criticism is pretty predictable. Industry forces could afford to ignore it when it looked impossible to get the signatures, but now that the signatures are in the bag they're having to take a different tactic.

SOME of the criticism is certainly genuine and exactly what it appears to be at face value, but it was inevitable that those doubts would be artificially boosted now.

[-] Mordikan@kbin.earth 12 points 1 week ago

I mean I was critical of it well before it hit 1.4M signatures. As it ramps up in articles about it, I'd assume an increase in negative sentiment in addition to the positive side. Its not a perfect thing and has different viewpoints, so it makes sense.

[-] mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 week ago

And what is your argument against the petition? All it says is that developers need to leave their game in some playable state for those who laid for it, with several options offered as examples

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[-] 007ace@lemmy.ca 11 points 1 week ago

I saw it posted on here much before it reached the threshold. I think that before then it was really just a few people running with it, now that it has gotten momentum, more people are sharing and we run in similar circles so it can appear to be overwhelming.

[-] szymon@programming.dev 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

This

So much internet space wasted for mundane thing,

Is This petition even automatic to get to the board of European Commission or European leaders?

If not, then it's waste of time,

Also I have zero knowledge about European Legislation, to be honest so I maybe in wrong

[-] paraphrand@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I’m not against the goal. But I have voiced that I don’t think this route/configuration of leadership will work.

I only heard about it once people on Lemmy started talking shit about this pirate guy. I hadn’t heard about him either. So it came on my radar as drama. And I ended up having a rough time sharing my point of view. People are really emotional about this intuitive. They take any criticism as an attack that could harm progress on signatures.

In the end the drama with this pirate dork ended up actually bringing positive attention that helped an otherwise flagging initiative for signatures.

I hope the initiative causes positive change.

[-] Pheta@fedia.io 11 points 1 week ago

But I have voiced that I don’t think this route/configuration of leadership will work.

Could you elaborate on this, beyond the one sentence? The rest of your comment makes it clear that you weren't aware, and still aren't about much of what was going on with SKG. Given that you don't have a clear understanding of what the timeline of SKG was, that does leave room for doubt that you understand the initiative. I would like to give you the benefit of the doubt, so please explain what you meant.

I hope the initiative causes positive change.

We all do.

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[-] Deflated0ne@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago

The bot farms and clout grasping social climbers don't care about things until they reqch a certain size.

[-] mriswith@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Not at all.

More attention means more people see it, so even if the percentage of complainers haven't changed, there are more people who know.

On top of that, there was criticism before. There's that streamer who was mocked relentlessly in comments and some defending him, there were articles about game developer lobby groups complaining that were posted here, etc.

[-] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Maybe not specifically this comm, but I had been sporadically arguing with people on various places on lemmy about SKG before Ross even dropped his 'SKG is probably dead' video that (re)ignited this whole thing.

A whole, whole lot of people I talked to basically had the same talking points Thor initially did, a lot of them were dedicated to various facts that were simply wrong, rhetoric that was either bipolar/hypocritical, or just ultimately nihlist (nothing can be done).

I was actually very relieved, initially, when Ross made above mentioned video, simply so I would no longer have to keep explaining all the various intricacies... Ross had addresed all this stuff before, but you'd have to watch about 2 or 3 hours of videos to truly get it, in all its detail.

The 'SKG is probably dead' video did a good job of doing both a broad overview, as well as going into detail with the more common, in-depth misunderstandings... which were pretty much all popularized by Thor.

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this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2025
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