Keep carrying on with that attitude.
Not investing any time or effort into anything, will get you exactly to one place: Nowhere.
BTW I’m 31. So hardly a boomer. I didn’t study, yet I outearned 80% of my fellow countrymen this year, working in sales. Every job that I left gave me glowing commendations. And I didn’t get those by giving people with middle finger, believe it or not.
The secret to being respected is first providing a reason to be given respect for. Just demanding it will get you nothing. Everyone on this planet is expendable (like Skaven Slaves), but some are more than others. There’s no shortage of “Le College Educated Zoomer lul” coming into job interviews thinking they own the place already - just because they got handed a slip of paper in exchange for 100k in student debt.
Seriously.
P.S.: Stale meme. Try harder next time, Zoomie.
You got to brush up on your history, too, by the way. Some of the biggest companies today were around for WW2 and supplying one of the warring sides with weapons, equipment and gear.
Hugo Boss has some of the best perfumes today, but they also made the suits for the Waffen SS.
Volkswagen was figuratively pushed by the big Austrian Man himself, to provide cars for his unwashed masses.
Miele is one of the best today when it comes to washing machines. They also built the interfaces for German torpedo units in 1937.
And for current day examples: Everybody either loves or hates Samsung Smartphones and tablets. But did you also know that they build fully automated turrets, electronic weapons and gadgets for warfare in South Korea? Not to forget almost everything else. They are really close to holding a semi-monopoly on Korea’s economy.
Nestlé is providing a huge chunk of processed food. They also have a track record of exploitation and made their early money with baby formula by manipulating unknowledgable women, making them think baby formula was the better alternative to their big momma milkers.
Many of our drug producing companies have a history of shady and questionable trials. Pfizer of all companies was involved in several bribery scandals.
The list could be expanded at your leisure, but I will stop here.
The point is: Business has no moral or ethics. And if you really hunt for it you will find plenty of skeletons in many toilets.
If there is a buyer, then there will be a provider of goods, services and more. You gotta do what you gotta do and Big Corporate is going to do it whether they have your approval or not. The world will keep spinning, so don’t feel too bad about it. Just remember next time: You don’t need to play a warhammer game to experience dystopian sci-fi.
You are living in such a universe right now - And you were probably completely oblivious to it until now. So it can’t be that bad.
I know this line of thought hasnt been started by you specifically but since it keeps popping up…
Whataboutism in general is bad and serves nobody except people that benefit from the current situation.
Even worse - comparing conditions that existed 100 years ago and using those as whataboutism is just stupid.
For example only 80 or so years before WW2 slavery was still legal in the first world.
check around 1860^
Everytime we go back in time 100 years conditions for the average person generally worsens by a large margin wether its due to working conditions, tools, disease, religion or what have you.
And the world certainly didnt get better because people just accepted things as they were. Progress is the result of struggle - whatever form that may take.
This sounds like something only an edgy teenager would write.
There are A LOT of buisnesses centered around helping others, fair trade, improving working conditions or whatever and there are tons of rules and regulations made to stop buisnesses from being overly exploitative or anti competetive.
Even if youre somehow convinced that buisnesses are only interested in maximizing profits theres still a huge area in between barely breaking even and maximizing profits as much as humanly possible.
Theres 8 billion people on the planet, of course theres bad things happening and its objectively true that news are biased towards reporting on bad things. That doesnt mean there arent good things happening either or its somehow okay to declare a war of aggression or release a hillarious skinner box of a game.
Although YOU specifically wont make a difference with that attitude thats for sure.
To be fair, it’s an interesting debate in the business world, I studied business before engineering and that was one of the first things they presented academically.
Very well put together argument. Thanks for taking the time. First off, I will start by saying that I do not approve of the current trend of Machiavellianism being everywhere. But I argue Machiavelli’s (and the Art of War’s, they are the same philosophy almost as is “Practical Idealism”) just so the reader of this forum here understands it.
And if we as “good guys” want to escape exploitation by those with deep schemes, we must first be able to recognize them. The important part being to realize that the game is rigged and thus to not play. It is the winning move, when you would otherwise face a much higher power you cannot reasonably be expected to defeat. This may sound a little off-topic, but hang in I’m getting to the point. About what you replied with:
Tiny nitpicks I’d have aside (Europe did not use slaves but their own peasant serfs so the slavery argument applies to North America more specifically), you are absolutely right of course. Change can only come from two major sources, one being the struggle of the weak, the underdogs, the workers, the slaves, the bottomfeeders, the underprivileged or whatever one may call us who do not rule. The other being of course top down change initiated by those who rule, most often specifically in their favor (and we are witnessing such a change right now by the way if you followed what Agenda 2030 and Agenda 21 are).
So I agree that if one wants to see change, they have to fight in one way or another. Freedom isn’t free and it also doesn’t come cheap.
That said the person I quoted was making the argument that things since the past have changed and that nowadays these things wouldn’t happen, that companies wouldn’t court clientel using anti-humanitarian efforts.
While it may have come off as crushingly pro-authoritarianist I was giving these examples so the guy I quoted could be freed from this one specific illusion.
Violations of rights, laws and shady practices of all sorts are not a thing of the past and will never be. They are now just better obfuscated by the media and entertainment industry (us discussing it here being highly ironic of course) distracting people from this truth.
There is no Big Global Player, Company or Agency that has at least not done something very bold at best. Often these things do border machiavellian thought trains and go much deeper into exploitation territory, though. Many markets are created without a need for something existing, so those wishing to make the sale create the need for the item first, then offer the supply to meet the artificially created demand.
No and yes. And I realize it sounded a bit edgy, but what can you do?
I definitely disagree that companies such as Fairtrade are really as fair as they claim. Of course I have no way to check this, I’m not inside it or seeing it with my own eyes, so I can only go by intuition. But it would be a weird exception of they were fair.
Of course there is a difference between taking the cut that you need and then some versus the min-maxing of profits at the detriment of everything. The latter is what we see a lot now and there is no way anyone is defending that argumentatively.
What I definitely see a lot is companies or NGOs promising to help the world, but actually just masking their control and their benefits of their held position with these charity like actions. Which is where we’d get into the topic of Practical Idealism and the lie of the giving, charitable Billionaire. Of course they do have to drive such a narrative to defend what’s theirs. I’m not discounting their need to be defensive of their possession. But at the same time it’s of course what’s really going on.
We are lied to on such a frequent basis, I would not be surprised at all if the reality of this world doesn’t even align 20% with what we’re told.
Getting back to the point - The companies who’d support a Hitler in 1939, would also support a Communist dictator now or a WEF disciple or a king. My entire point I have been trying to make, and I admit this gets way too wordy here, is that they do not follow an ideology truly. At least not on the decision-making and financing level.
They follow the narrative of whoever is in charge because not doing so would end their chance at getting anything done.
This is what many ideologues do not seem to grasp. They will talk about pandering and how it’s soulless and hollow, but make distinctions between different groups thinking there are those who are fake and those who are not.
But truly, there is no incentive for any company to toe any ideological line other than that of the strongest ruler at present to preserve their own status. Which is why it is futile to complain about companies bending the knee to concept A, B or C anywhere. And with that in mind, it is no longer hypocritical for a company to support China’s faux Communism (and their Oligarchs) while at the same time supporting America’s faux Capitalism (and their Oligarchs as well).
It’s big theatre for people who are easily impressed.
Your second paragraph on the news is true. As humans we do have an innate focus on the dramatic and the traumatic. We perceive negative things more highly than the positive outcomes. This is clearly a defensive mechanism inside us and something Big Corporate found out over the last 80 or so years since mass media surfaced.
The backlash this game specifically here received would be a great example. So many things that are great about it, but everyone harps on the cash shop and the bugs.
As for me, you are right. I have accepted my position (mostly) and don’t want to rock the boat too much. I’d rather benefit somewhat myself, although within reason. I always stay honest, but try to make a sale regardless. I’ve lost many sales as a sales rep due to honesty and have no regrets. I still did alright.
My life, even if expendable, has some value to me and I don’t want to sacrifice it for some greater goal that may or may not succeed - Especially when so many movements before have become easily overtaken by the powers that be.
They are cunning, intelligent, well-organized and have respectable foresight despite what many seem to believe. The idea that an entire group of people could have ruling influence and somehow be massively incompetent in itself is a psyop run on us by the news on the daily. It is almost scary how well this idea has penetrated the masses.
The “dumb politician” and the “greedy billionaire” are literal memes. The Politician is not dumb, he only plays dumb as a deescalation tactic.
The billionaire is not greedy, he doesn’t need any more money - He uses his wealth to control us and ration what we can and cannot purchase.
Why am I typing all this up? I feel a little guilty knowing all this and seeing that many are heading head first into their doom.
When things finally go south for real, I will be able to tell myself that I at least told everyone I could. Maybe it’s going to save one soul or the other.
I’m not sure ill get around to making a more lengthy response overall, i usually just post whenever i particularly feel like writing something. I can however address this part really easily.
Actual proof of the contrary :
The incentive to stay is particularly increased because so many others left and as a result there is less market competition which obviously is a huge upside for anyone looking to make a profit. Id argue that especially the online services (e.g. netflix) pretty much only lose money by doing this. A bunch of the ones on the list also only stopped shipping to russia which again is exclusively a net loss for the buisness.
So actually a fairly large number of major companies are not willing to support a war of aggression or are at the very least trying not to. And trying is already much much better than not doing anything.
PS: A lot of europeans (seafaring nations especially - Britain, Spain and Portugal in particular) had colonies with slaves.
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Unrelated to your post but on topic since it also came up: In a time where online information and online discourse is highly valuable to regulate actions and leaves no real opportunity for 1940 style propaganda, supporting a company that heavily ties into a government that actively limits free access to information via the internet is really not defendeable with “but they have nice chairs!”.
Again its, really not possible to talk about tencent without being political. You cant just “wish” a thing to not be tied to the politics that make it look really bad by just saying “no politics but you can talk about the other thing”.
I’d agree with you that a thorough analysis of Tencent can’t probably do without, but as we’ve been reminded by the kind sharks, that goes against the rules of the forum. We can, although incompletely perhaps, talk about the game practices they have, and that’d be even more relevant to the place we’re making the conversation in.
Part of the topics I originally mentioned were referencing practices - game practices - the OPs found shady and that’s pretty much a topic that we can have here.
In short, I guess we’ll be unable to get a reply to “how do they feel about tencent in general” but “how do they feel about putting X into their game” is pretty much a fair question.
I haven’t got DT, but from what I understand the worst part of their microtransactions has been rolled back - or it’s about to?
I haven’t got DT, but from what I understand the worst part of their microtransactions has been rolled back - or it’s about to?
No it didn’t happen and I don’t think it will.
To be fair, I don’t hate the microtransactions in DT at all, still I’m not comfortable putting extra investment in a game I found trouble liking.
Also how do you reply 2 different posts in a single one…?
Again its, really not possible to talk about tencent without being political.
If you know Tencent enough you know politics is irrelevant in their practices in the game industry. They are business people motivated by money. You are trying to criticize a gov, that’s a totally different entity.
I personally couldnt care less about a cosmetics only mtx shop and how awful the FOMO and watnot on it is and how the bundles used to make you overspend.
The game has problems far far beyond that - the fact that there IS a mtx shop with the game being in such a state is the real problem. Things that dont actually work that i can remember on the spot:
all the social features,
recently played completely non-functional doesnt actually show recently played
“press Q to join strike team” does absolutely nothing even when 4 players press q
arbitrary blocklist limit that is hillariously low
parts of the map are just broken buggy with enemies literally spawning out of thin air immediately on top of you in large numbers (refinery delta 17)
hit registration is super wonky, ive had several times when i stop shooting because i think a special “should” be dead but he only dies over half a second or more later (kill accredit to me! half a second after i stopped damaging it!), very very noticeable delay
I live in central europe and no other game does this.
“Anti Cheat” was recently removed/paused (maybe due to crashing?), since then ive already seen a guy with infinite ammo and another guy with a bolter with cheated damage stats 3 shotting mutants on damnation (which is something the bolter is particularly bad at and is not even remotely possible)
someone starting a votekick ingame stops you from playing the game until you voted - can kill you
you cant votekick a person after you blocked them ~ usually those are the people youd want to kick. Particularly bad because - as i already mentioned - the recently played list doesnt actually work.
You cant play solo custom games
You cant select maps or difficulty or modifiers - you are literally at the mercy of the game to “allow” you to play any given map or modifier. Imagine wanting to play high intensity but the game simply doesnt allow you to get a map with that modifier for days
Obligatory “all gear progression is made thru an RNG shop” and “Crafting is almost entirely missing” and whats here is not even that useful. Literally logging in every 2 hours for 15 minutes to check the shop is THE BEST WAY to play the game to get gear. Imagine wanting to try a weapon and not seeing it at all for days. Imagine doing that on multiple characters with long load screens in between checking the shop. Its horrific!
stun grenades on zealot use the zealots location to check if they can hit a bulwark (shield blocks the stun) instead of the grenades location making it borderline impossible to stun bulwarks aggrod on to you.
^That is the problem. The mtx shop being the only thing in the game that is fully functional is just the grueling contrast that causes people to mald more.
I was honestly surprised they released the game in such a state, after the feedback from VT2 (which wasn’t nearly that bad). Then I remembered a certain holiday was around the corner…
I think the fact that Fatshark released Darktide in state that amounts to “RNG with gameplay” speaks volumes as to how their new investors influence them.
They forgot all the lessons they were supposed to have learned from their previous games and released a beta as a full title. It’s pretty clear now that they are working to please investors rather then their players.
As for the article, I don’t think it’s really going to have an impact on Fatshark already ruined reputation.
I personally don’t think any Swede has any moral stock to pass such judgements, so no it would not in fact be interesting - it would be kitchen polititcs and therefore against this forum guidelines.