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Cities: Skylines 2 developers have noticed 'a growing tendency of toxicity in our community'
(www.techradar.com)
this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2024
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well yeah, they are trying to sell a game that looks straight up unfinished, like it was a masterpiece.
entitled much? did they expect praise?
The statement still asks for criticism but asks for it to be polite.
You can say something is bad without sounding like an asshole.
People don’t tend to be polite when they buy a dodgy product of any kind, why would video games be different?
There's no reason to treat the developers like shit though.
Gamers don't need to act like entitled bitches about everything. Especially when they continue to play the game. Provide feedback, leave a review, and move on. There's no excuse for rudeness.
Can you tell me a single industry where you treat customers like shit and not get abuse in return?
People are acting like angry reviews are somehow unwarranted when customers are being sold defective products.
What about a single other industry where people make 8 hour long essays shitting on one specific person and get hundreds of thousands of views?
You’re not familiar with the car and motorcycle industries are you?
People spend years tearing into companies over vehicles, spending hundreds or thousands of hours meticulously detailing every engineering problem, real or imagined, and shitting on anyone who disagrees.
The only difference is that car and motorcycle companies generally shield their employees from criticism to a much greater degree.
You don’t usually see the engineers names in a credit screen in your car. Those engineers aren’t generally seen shit posting on twitter about how entitled the customers are because that would get them sacked.
No, didn't know about that.
I don't think another industry having the same problem makes this one more palatable though.
You kinda have to think that though. You tried to argue that no other industry has the same problem, therefore this is unforgivable. So by following your own logic, it seems like because others do it as well it means it's not unforgivable, it's just the standard response. Very much a normal reaction to being fed shit by yet another corpo that expects you to compliment the taste.
Is there a word for an argument that tries to justify their side by saying "it happens in this other place, so it should be okay here, too", because that's what that sounds like to me.
You can be constructive without being a dick, full stop. No justification from it happening elsewhere will actually justify that. Being a dick is not justifiable. Feeling upset and angry absolutely is, and you can express that, again, without being a dick.
Show me people being dicks about it, I’ve looked and haven’t seen it.
I’ll tell you a dick move I have seen though… Ive seen a developer lie about features and deliver a broken mess for full price.
I'm talking generally, I have no real knowledge or horse in this specific race. If people aren't actually being toxic here, then that's awesome and they should keep it up.
Yes, I think if a developer does that and everyone involved in delivering that marketing and the developers knew from the outset they would have to deliver those features, but wouldn't be able to, and they didn't stop the people giving the public that information if they are even able to do that, then the specific people involved in those decisions would be dicks, even then, sinking to their level is not a good look.
This is also why people should wait for release and reviews. No one forced you at gunpoint to pay for a gane that didn't deliver on its marketing. This happens so much in this industry you should almost expect it and be wary, and the main way to get that message across to the dev is to not buy it until it's satisfactory. That's what they deserve for their transgression and what will hit them where it hurts deservedly, no money.
So because it’s “industry practice” to screw over consumers it’s somehow on consumers?
I suppose we can apply the same logic to scams, victims know about scams and fall for them anyway so it’s their own fault when their life savings get stolen.
No point in blaming the scammers. Everyone knows how it works.
I wouldn't say consumers deserve that burden, but we have it because there's no governmental regulation of moral marketing practices. If we can legally move towards that somehow, then hell yeah, but I'll be honest that I'm too lazy and/or legally inept to do that myself.
I'm not saying it should be the customer's problem, but as humans that are great at learning pattern recognition it can help us avoid misery and wasting our money, and I wouldn't also say that people should do that willy nilly just because ideally you'd be able to trust marketing. You can't. It's just the only way to cope with this messed up system in its current state.
So… blame the system? The devs are the antagonists in this system and the only ones with the power to stop pushing out broken garbage and marketing based on lies.
Blaming the victims won’t change the system.
There will always be people unfamiliar with the pitfalls of the system. Always fresh victims to part from their money.
So I blame the company because the company is the system. I blame the scammers because they are the system.
Oh and regulations don’t even slow down scammers of any kind. They already know they’re breaking the rules, breaking laws is just the next logical step.
A step companies are all too willing to take because the punishments cost less than they’ll profit.
I do not blame people for being fooled… because there’s always a scam good enough to fool even me. And I’m smart.
Well, you're correct on where the fault rests as long as the lies were willingly made, but in the scenario we're originally talking about the ultimate result you're ending up with is... Being an asshole. So, in this total fucked system of manipulation and marketing lies the justice you're pushing for is being an asshole on a forum. I don't really think that solves anything or justifies itself.
Don't think that I'm arguing that the company should get a free pass for any of this or that the company isn't at fault/isn't the system, the root of what I'm saying is that toxicity isn't really warranted when it's about buying a videogame that wasn't made well and didn't meet marketing expectations, and if you want to avoid being in a situation where you got burned buying a product that didn't meet your expectations, you can establish expectations closer to reality by doing smart research that is absolutely everywhere and easily obtained for free post-release. Being an asshole to a developer as a whole targets people that fundementally aren't at fault, which is what allows companies to pull the whole "people don't feel safe" card when public relations toxicity gets out of hand. A small part of that can be true, and doesn't help our case.
Some people will fall for it, yes, and awareness helps reach people that aren't going out of their way to research what they're buying, but you can raise awareness and make a scene about this stuff in a mature fashion. I'm in no way saying we shouldn't make a stink about situations like this, it's how you do it.
See I still disagree; Im Australian and we measure a lot of things (social, political) by what we call the pub test.
If you can’t convince people in a pub that something is a good idea then it doesn’t pass the political pub test.
The social pub test is similar, it’s where if doing something in a pub would cause another patron to throw you a beating it fails the pub test.
If you rip someone off for $60 to $120 in a pub and they realise they will punch your head in.
Mean comments are an entirely reasonable if somewhat juvenile response to being lied to and ripped off.
Devs acting like victims because people said mean things after they lied to and ripped those people off is ridiculous.
They should grow a thicker skin or get out of the game of scamming people.
While I don't think that being an asshole about something is a reasonable response, I find it a very understandable response, especially about subjects like this. Regardless of how "turn the other cheek" I happen to be personally, the issues surrounding video game marketing are pretty large, and this sort of cycle of selling a product that doesn't match its marketed features and level of polish happens far more than it should.
The only thing I feel bad about when it comes to agreeing with your outlook is that there totally are developers who technically work for the parent company receiving toxicity, but had nothing to do with deciding how polished the game could be at release, what top level features the game could receive, or how the game could be marketed, but still end up receiving toxicity for the state of the game because they still are the devs, and if you go down the path of "getting out of the game" when it comes to those people, they may not have ever known it would end up that way when they took the job, or they may need that job to survive.
That grey area is the one part that gives me pause, and it's the reason I think companies at large pull that card, because you can never prove that the public isn't hurting innocents, and even though you could look at a case like this, establish that you can't see any toxicity or death threats in forums, and decide that the company is lying about toxicity existing at all, they may have deleted those posts, continuing to muddy the waters.
It's just a fucked up situation all round and there's no black and white answer to it, for me. I think being a manager at my job has hard taught me that sinking to someone's level when it comes to emotional response is absolutely never a good idea, and that's bled out to other areas of my life, but I can understand your outlook and agree to disagree on how we'd react to this situation individually.
Professional sports leagues are another example. Put a shit product on the field, you're going to get shit back from the fans. Every now and then a young star player comes up (especially in American football) that received adulation for years at the college level and suddenly gets faced with jeers. They react like Colossal Order does here and--eventually--learn that they are picking a fight against collective emotional response that they are never going to win.
CO is learning that lesson now. While they can and should take actions against those that cross the line (death threats, etc.), there's not much in the way of effective corrective action here. It's all on them. They can a) put out a better product, b) hire community managers with thicker skin that can better assuage their fans, or c) withdraw from community interaction. Most that can't handle it pick the third option.
Exactly.
Shouldn’t expect toxicity.
What? You’re not hurting only the devs here (though, it still wouldn’t be okay to hurt the devs in the first place).
Let’s be honest here. Cities Skylines 2 community is so toxic it’s actually a burden even for players. The Steam forums and most online places dedicated to the game are full of entitled people who, instead of going for another game, spend their days shitting on it. Even going as far as jumping over people actually enjoying the game. That’s what toxicity means. And you can find any excuse you want, it’s not a sane behaviour.