If the SKG movement doesn’t organise, that’s all we’ll get: a communiqué to shut the hell up.
Over a million Europeans have signed a petition in less than a month. Why only Europeans? Big ecelebs like PewDiePie and Critikal have made videos on this. It’s got a lot of people interested. Why not get everyone in on something more direct? Something international? Why does the world need to sit and wait and hope the EU parliament fixes everything? It seems like a waste of momentum. It needs to be more than just a European petition. A call to boycott the worst companies until they change their EULA and TOS would be a great start.
Well, if you had been here since the start you’d know that Ross started SKG by having multiple petitions around the globe. The EU initiative is one the last (if not the last) petition he pushed for. For Australia and Canada the ship already sailed, Australia said no and Canada gave a roundabout no. Ross didn’t even try in the US because the US is such a lost cause there’s nothing to even petition for. I don’t remember what happened with Brazil but it was on Ross’s radar. Most other countries would simply be too small to have an impact on the global scale. Which is why the last two bastions left are the UK and the EU, because the haven’t said outright “No” yet and they’re big enough to influence the market. The rest of the world has to wait because the other influential parts of the world have already failed.
As for a boycott, you’re free to start organizing one. I see that as a lost cause. If we can barely get 1 million Europeans to do the bare minimum of signing one petition I don’t see how you’re going to get 10+ million people across the globe to do more than the bare minimum for who knows how long. Boycotts don’t work because 99% of gamers do not give a fuck. I’ve seen different groups of people boycott Ubisoft for 20 years now and I personally had boycotted them for about a decade, it had no impact as Ubisoft made even more profits despite the different boycotts. Modern Warfare 2 boycott had no impact on the removal of dedicated servers. People even boycotted Valve when Steam launched and that did nothing. Boycotts have only had very limited consumer rights successes in individual games, like EA removing pay to win mechanics from Battlefront 2. Meanwhile Australia ended up made Steam to offer refunds to everyone and Belgium and Netherlands restrictions on lootboxes has noticeably reduced their usage in games.
You’re free to prove to me wrong but government actions end up being far more successful than boycotts.
As evident from Australia, Canada and the US, every government does not care. There’s no guarantee that the EU commission will care either, but because we’ve (hopefully) met their pretty significant requirement they have to care enough to address it. And in an ideal society they would have to care because the government is for the people and enough people have voiced their concern.
Okay, so what more should we do? Boycott somehow?
atro_city said it well:
Over a million Europeans have signed a petition in less than a month. Why only Europeans? Big ecelebs like PewDiePie and Critikal have made videos on this. It’s got a lot of people interested. Why not get everyone in on something more direct? Something international? Why does the world need to sit and wait and hope the EU parliament fixes everything? It seems like a waste of momentum. It needs to be more than just a European petition. A call to boycott the worst companies until they change their EULA and TOS would be a great start.
Well, if you had been here since the start you’d know that Ross started SKG by having multiple petitions around the globe. The EU initiative is one the last (if not the last) petition he pushed for. For Australia and Canada the ship already sailed, Australia said no and Canada gave a roundabout no. Ross didn’t even try in the US because the US is such a lost cause there’s nothing to even petition for. I don’t remember what happened with Brazil but it was on Ross’s radar. Most other countries would simply be too small to have an impact on the global scale. Which is why the last two bastions left are the UK and the EU, because the haven’t said outright “No” yet and they’re big enough to influence the market. The rest of the world has to wait because the other influential parts of the world have already failed.
As for a boycott, you’re free to start organizing one. I see that as a lost cause. If we can barely get 1 million Europeans to do the bare minimum of signing one petition I don’t see how you’re going to get 10+ million people across the globe to do more than the bare minimum for who knows how long. Boycotts don’t work because 99% of gamers do not give a fuck. I’ve seen different groups of people boycott Ubisoft for 20 years now and I personally had boycotted them for about a decade, it had no impact as Ubisoft made even more profits despite the different boycotts. Modern Warfare 2 boycott had no impact on the removal of dedicated servers. People even boycotted Valve when Steam launched and that did nothing. Boycotts have only had very limited consumer rights successes in individual games, like EA removing pay to win mechanics from Battlefront 2. Meanwhile Australia ended up made Steam to offer refunds to everyone and Belgium and Netherlands restrictions on lootboxes has noticeably reduced their usage in games.
You’re free to prove to me wrong but government actions end up being far more successful than boycotts.
Then why would any government care?
As evident from Australia, Canada and the US, every government does not care. There’s no guarantee that the EU commission will care either, but because we’ve (hopefully) met their pretty significant requirement they have to care enough to address it. And in an ideal society they would have to care because the government is for the people and enough people have voiced their concern.
Also considering there’s at least one prominent EU parliament politician showing public support it’s bound to get a bit more political attention than just a simple “No” that we’ve seen so far.