FTC Complaint about Anthony Burch / Destructoid

[AuronFtw]

The game devloping world isn't some big cover up world you seem to think it is.

I agree with a lot of the stuff you posted here, but the reality of the past decade of gaming lies in stark contrast to this comment. Developers and publishers DO make a concerted effort to cover up shit they don't like, all in the name of profit. They'll lie and deceive customers to get as many day 1 sales as possible, going so far as to produce trailers containing nearly no gameplay footage whatsoever, and what small amount is shown is heavily doctored (gearbox says hello on this one). They'll invent "enemies of gaming" like piracy, shared games, etc to justify harsher and harsher anti-consumer policies ranging from the dumbass serial keys of the 90s to always-online DRM of today. They'll implement bullshit like day-1 DLC, low quality DLC, cheap re-skins disguised as DLC, season passes, and pre-order bonuses to gouge every penny out of every potential consumer. They refuse to produce demos for games because they think it leads to lost sales (and probably does, if the game is shitty, which the majority are), substituting aforementioned heavily doctored trailers in place of demos. They bully what journos they can't buy off (or sleep with, lolol), sometimes going as far as to get them fired [http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/03/21/gaming-the-system-how-a-gaming-journalist-lost-his-job-over-a-negative-review/] to put a stop honest opinions that could cost them money.

Does that really seem like it's not "some big cover up world" given all the shit they've historically pulled, and continue to pull to this day? Honestly the Zoe Quinn thing is a drop in the bucket when compared to all the bullshit the games industry has pulled before then. Take a few days and marathon the earlier jimquisitions (before he went all super saiyan SJW level 7); he covers a ton of bullshit that a ton of developers have done over the years solely to increase profits at the cost of consumer trust. Even something as recent as the XBone is a clear testament to how little the industry cares about its consumers, and how far they'll go to lord power over them (and their wallets). In such an industry, do you really think they care about their consumers enough to be open and honest about... anything? They do not. Their actions show they do not. And in an era where Sony is still allowed to publish games after throwing their weight around in underhanded "whats conflict of interest mate?" deals leading to reviewers losing their jobs, you'd have to be literally delusional to say the industry isn't doing some seriously shady shit on a regular basis.

 

[Mikeybb]

Hashtags and threads and patting each other on the back when you get someone to quit their job isn't change.

The hashtags are good for drawing attention.
Threads are a good gathering point, and the one we have here has been a source of some decent points but additionally a point of contact between some of the escapist readerbase and the upper echelons of the escapist management/ownership.
The part I agree with there is the self congratulatory response to someone quitting.
That feels distasteful.
Wrong.
It's not meant to be about getting anyone to quit, but getting them to listen.
Among other things, of course.
A topic I'm personally interested in are the various reports of developers who are claiming that they and others have been afraid to speak up over certain issues for a long time.
I want to know who of, why and, of course, if it's true.

Maybe it needed a manager. But then, I did this kind of stuff off and on for years. I am just speaking from personal experience, what do I know?

A manager would provide a cohesive message for the ones who chose to gather with them, but I think there's far too many people engaged in this for any single person to be able to gather them all around and far too little trust that a civil question would be met with anything but dismissal.

As for Burch, no one praised him. They just said that the fact no one jumped all over him MONTHS ago when he and the guy from Destructiod joked about it over twitter (which they did), about corruption then, was weird. It was a bit odd that no one thought it was a big deal then? He pointed to the fact that he was a guy just having fun with another guy as proof of sexism. I'm not touching that with a ten foot pole. I'm just saying, no one said he was a good guy, they just said he had a point.

If this was such a big deal for so long, someone should have noticed it then. And that is true.

There's a phrase that has been mentioned a lot in this.
The straw that broke the camels back.
For a lot of people I've seen their first message on newly created accounts here be 'this is what finally got me to make an account'.
That events as this happened before and, as far as I know, weren't enough for the people who noticed them to complain loud enough to attract attention (as far as I know, again I don't follow twitter) doesn't invalidate the reaction.
They just become part of the series of events that have built up to this outpouring of resistance towards gaming journalism and its desire to paint a narrative where gamers are, frankly, universally horrible.

One of the first questions I asked back before all of this, when details were light and threads were being closed down everywhere was "why aren't people asking about Gray?"
The response I got was "because no one is defending him".
It may have been the striesand effect, but I felt it and other responses also confirmed that some people had their sights set firmly on this situation because of sexist reasons.
As time went on though and places became more open to discussion, the people talking about Quinn became less of a prevalent voice in the discussion and those that did bring it up were reminded that it really isn't about her.

I stand by that.
It isn't about her.
It shouldn't have been about her from the beginning.
It just took more time for the voices saying that to be numerous enough to louder than the voices that were (and still are) saying it should be.

Incidentally, I agree with the above poster who stated that they were glad you take part in these discussions.
More voices talking from people who are willing to listen too, even if they don't agree at the end of it, has more to offer gaming as a culture than any well worded article.

 

[Something Amyss]

So basically, "there's a much stronger connection that you guys completely ignored because you're sexist assholes" (paraphrasing his words, not attacking anyone myself) turns into "I am corrupt and I totally used my friendship to gain better reviews."

There's a reason I don't take you guys seriously, and it's not just because I am a general in the SJW army. Also, Borderlands 2 was fun, I enjoyed it, and it's a shame that I don't have anyone to play with anymore. It made two of my friends sick. I don't know why, since normally I'm the one who gets sick from FPS.

Yeah, he's just citing that as an example of a dev being friends with publishers, not saying there was anything illicit going on. His entire point is that this so-called "corruption" isn't actually a big deal, and nobody treated it like one until it presented an opportunity to harass women.

We just had people complaining that the latest Critical Miss was calling all white men rapists, completely missing the point of the strip (that it was fabricated by someone other than Erin to stir up a shitstorm), so....

Like, honestly, I just keep hoping I'm missing some serious satire here.

As to FTC filings, (as well as Gamergate as a whole), I'm reminded of the Boy Who Cried Wolf. If people keep making frivolous claims, nobody will take any claim seriously.

Wait... I'm assuming this post wasn't for me then, was it? Oh, well, still. Thanks though. ^.^

You sure he didn't mention you by name?

Of course this is meant mostly a shot across the bows. But honestly if someone wants to try filing a report i`m not stopping anyone.
That guy steps up insulting people claiming how he could have done it.

In trying to make the point that Gamergate isn't seriously about journalistic integrity, yes. You left that part out.

But that's the thing. This looks more like the actions of someone who wants to not only lash out, but involve the federal government over someone hurting your feelings (and I'm not necessarily sure you specifically should feel hurt). This isn't much better than SWATting.

"Why are you guys complaining about Zoe Quinn? I've also had journalist friends give me biased reviews! Wait... that's also bad? ....shit."

I honestly don't see how Burch implicating himself was a in any way a smart move. That being said, not exactly sure why the FTC needs to be brought into this.

The fact that he didn't implicate himself might be part of why he thought "it" was a smart move. Maybe he erroneously assumed that gamers would take his point and not take it out of context, blow it up, and involve the government.

If he actually was doing something wrong, though, why wouldn't you involve the FTC?

 

[Something Amyss]

I'm not sure. I'm not sure of much of anything any longer.

I told you not to drink Fae blood!

...Wait, wrong thread. That thread involved making things up to have something to complain about. This thread is totally different.

 

[Something Amyss]

You're right, time to put my serious goggles on. Hold on, I think I lost them. I'll be back, I left them in the thread about my new glasses.

Why not just wear serious specs? It works for me.

 

[runic knight]

People are lashing out at journalists because the atmosphere of distrust and attack is being feed, heavily so by journalists implicated in this mess. This is resulting in people acting out.

Lets not forget that the gamergate movement is literally just a mob of angry consumers acting in a loosely cohesive direction based on being pissed off by gaming journalism's efforts and behavior. There is no leadership, there is no organization, there is just a hell of a lot of angry individual gamers. Hell, the motivations for their anger vary from outrage at journalists being too close to devs, to how they treat their readers and the people they are suppose to represent the interests of, to how they represent SJW causes, to how they taint SJW causes by soiling the name, to whatever else.


Now, all these reasons circle around the larger whole of "gaming journalism has a shit ton of issues with integrity". Hence why most people, even if their motivations are different, still try to call this an issue of journalist integrity, because the various motivations all relate to how the media handles shit.

Now, how people respond to that and try to address it, well, that is as varied as the people who make up the mob. Some try to take it up with journalists, others apply pressure to advertisers, some try to instigate legal fights, some try to ignore the sites doing it...really, you have individual approaches by people to match the makeup of the mob itself.

To borrow an analogy, it is a flock of birds. No one leader, but they all sort of move in the same general direction and act independently but with the same endgoal.

Now personally I think having some damn leadership and organization would help a lot but so far that hasn't happened. Still, individuals only represent individuals in gaming because of both anonymity and the inability to feasibly DO anything to stop or deter any action of another person before it happens, regardless how silly or ill thought out. Blaming a flock of birds because one shit on your car. Calling birds misogynist because they shit on the car of a woman.

Switch to the journalist side of things, and we have no anonymity, an organized effort to share a message and legitimate standards they are support to meet. They have leadership and organization and cooperation. And while they certainly are not a uniform force with full control over who is or is not representative of them, they do have a lot more control then the mob. Sadly, the management of the journalists implicated by this debacle have done nothing at all to rein in their own side, either by issuing statements against the harassment and behavior of their own, or by by giving a general "rule of engagement" out there showing the standard they want the debate to happen on. Instead we get more shit stirring and baiting and often by the people heavily criticized already.


So, how does this all relate to Burch? He is asking why a group that is only a collection of individuals acting out of their own accord, hasn't gone after his shit while most people are zero'd in on the journalists who actually have to adhere to and answer to the standards set by the people who they are suppose to represent: the gaming audience.

The answer why no one cares about his shit at the moment? Because he isn't important in the topic and wasn't a catalyst for the whole thing being shielded from criticism. He is just another symptom to be noted for coming out and demanding attention on the topic in a topic filled with people doing a hell of a lot more to demand attention.

 

[Something Amyss]

The FTC took them when they realized I was using them in a telemarketing scam.

You shouldn't say that so loud around these parts. That sort of thing is taken very seriously if you have a vagina.

 

[Something Amyss]

You're right... >.> I do not have a vagina. I am a male. I have only joked about being a woman. It was meant to be ironic. I am totally a dude.

Oh, good. I was worried about you, dude. Gaming doesn't seem very safe for women right about now, and while it hasn't completely trickled down to every woman, the sort of blanket backlash against "feminists," "SJWs," and anyone else who might be sympathetic to the female cause is getting rather harsh.

I did not have sex with that woman. It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is.

[small] Are you ready for some 90s references?! [/small]

No cigar reference? Son, I am disappoint.

Honestly, game journalism is pretty hopeless right now. Problem i have with zoe quin is the hypocrisy. Sleeping with your boss to promote a game about how horrible it is to be objectivised is just about as hypocritical as it gets.

Wait, which game was that? I thought this was about Depression Quest, which deals with...Depression. It's sort of what it says on the tin.

Even ignoring that part, you're assembling a narrative without any sort of facts to back it up and calling the end result hypocrisy.

Honestly, while i don't think she deserves death threats, i do think she deserves to be seen as a hypocrite, and to loose any moral or journalistic credibility she might have had

And further ignoring the fabricated narrative, what journalistic integrity would Quinn have, since she's not a journalist?

 

[Something Amyss]

Clips from depression quest show how awful it is to get hit on. So yea, sleeping with your boss to promote a game where getting hit on is the worst of evils is still pretty hypocritical, journalist or not.

That's kind of a non sequitur. bneing hit on and choosing to screw someone (for any reason outside of actively being coerced) are different things entirely.

Basically, it turns into the following:
-Quinn did thing A.
-Quinn complained about thing B, THEREFORE,
-Quinn is a hypocrite.

Doesn't track.

Linda Tripp?

I'll allow it. Though you may want to add something else, as that may be in low content post territory.

 

[teamcharlie]

So what Anthony Burch has publicly admitted to is...still having friends from a website he used to work on.

He has not said that he used these friendships to influence the review scores of a game he was head writer on, and I'm not aware of there being any other evidence to suggest this occurred. Were any such evidence to exist to suggest an actual conspiracy, the FTC complaint might have merit. But it doesn't. Because having friends is neither illegal nor unethical, and the Destructoid review scores for BL2 are clearly in line with other reviews of the game from unrelated websites.

http://www.destructoid.com/review-borderlands-2-235087.phtml

http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/borderlands-2/critic-reviews

 

[Something Amyss]

I'll allow it. Though you may want to add something else, as that may be in low content post territory.

Well, you have to give me some leeway, I was in junior high/high school during this time. I was a bit distracted by other things. I believe at the time I was very much involved in band and clarinets. So I will of course make the obligatory "one time in band camp joke" despite never being in band camp, and of course, being male that would make no sense at all. Because I am a dude. Bro.

I went to band camp, but had a trombone. Yeah, I probably shouldn't have said that in public.

I was similarly in high school at the time. I've just, apparently, always been a precocious little SJW.

 

[Something Amyss]

Actually, I played a bass clarinet. Have you ever seen one of those? It was nearly as tall as I was when I was sitting down. I had to play it in Marching Band, which was incredibly awkward, and by the time I learned how to handle it properly (har! joke!), I had already decided to move on to other such things. Like journalism and photo journalism.

Ow! That would really make "one time at band camp" jokes harsh!

Oh I'm derailing again. Yes, yes, FTC doesn't handle complaints like this one anyway, this wouldn't even remotely fall under consumer protection, as it didn't promise anything, this was a review by an independent website, not by the game itself. If anything it's just ethical dishonesty, no law was broken.

Yeah, but I honestly don't think this was ever anything other than another grudge match sort of deal. This struck me as a milder version of swatting.

 

[DirgeNovak]

He didn't "use his friendly relationships" with Dtoid to get good reviews, he just... got a good review from Dtoid.
Need I remind you that the same publication also eviscerated Aliens Colonial Marines, also made by the same studio? Burch's friendship with Dtoid didn't help much there.

Could it be that... *gasp* the reviewers gave their legitimate opinion? *faints*