Have Boycotts and Petitions EVER worked in the Game Industry?

Flammablezeus

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The Mass Effect 3 ending and the Dark Souls PC port are the only things I can think of where a game has been directly affected by a petition.
 

aozgolo

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While I certainly see the impact of actual fan feedback being considered by companies, there is rarely acknowledgement of an organized petition or boycott being the root cause, even if one is present and the changes made, that may be more a case of correlation and not causation.

Though I will certainly acknowledge I may not be an expert on this, and most of my curiosity on the subject stems from seeing a vocal minority on forums and comment sections crying for "sending a message" to certain developers, usually asking gamers to not buy what will undoubtedly be a top seller (GTA:V on PC comes to mind)

I think money talks more than anything, petitions for localization probably go over a lot better than petitions for core game changes as one is a quantifiable statistic of consumer demand, whereas the other could be mass appeal to alter a game's intended design. I see more often a game altered as reaction to sales figures and critical reviews than actual petitions, especially when a publisher is involved.
 

SonOfVoorhees

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Boycotts dont work because those they call for boycotts still by the game anyway. Look at L4D2 - that game sold loads when it was being boycotted.
 

Pyrian

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It's a scale thing. A big enough outcry always works. Small ones never work. The only question is where you draw that line.
 

StreamerDarkly

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It really depends how easily the target of the petition/boycott/bullying can be pushed around.

For example, a group of online Twitter bullies petitioned SupaNova to revoke Adam Baldwin's invitation. It was done under the paper-thin pretext of event attendees needing to "feel safe", which ostensibly wouldn't be possible in the presence of a Gamergate enabler. A counter-petition was filed with a similar level of support. In the end SupaNova decided to uphold the invitation. Would they have done so in the absence of the counter-petition? I'd like to think so.

Another very recent example was the 'Batgirl' cover. While I don't believe there was a formal petition or boycott, this was a Twitter hashtag movement promulgated by people who don't actually read comics and who feel emotionally traumatized by their own shadows. Nevertheless, the main authors of the series and the company itself folded like a cheap suit.
 

MoltenSilver

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The biggest problem is what some people have mentioned above: Despite all the bitching and moaning these games sell anyways. What's even worse and especially bothers me though is how can anyone effectively boycott something when it's already made 90% of its revenue from preorders? (Short of something truly heinous happening that causes a bunch of cancelled orders). The sad fact is the majority of people who are generating revenue for the game industry either lack the desire and/or discipline to effectively harm a company's revenue, and the majority of the Triple-A industry's perspective towards exploring catering to new markets seems to be "Got mine, screw you" at best and condescension at worst

And that leads into cases when people boycott something they were never considered a source of revenue for the project in the first places. It will fail unless the boycotting group can somehow prove they're a more lucrative market than the existing customers, which is going to be an unbelievably hard sell to make to any company since they can rely on the existing customers to actually put their money on the table. (For example let's say someone made a game that's very fun but also racist against green-skinned people; it doesn't matter how massive a protest is formed against it if enough people buy it for the fun part because they don't care about politics of green people.)

Short version: To work it either has to demonstrate it would be advantageous anyways for the boycotted party to do it (Dark Souls PC), or it has to be more-or-less completely unanimous so that there is no market or niche of buyers large enough left to support the cost (The XBone drm)
 

Silentpony_v1legacy

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LegendOfLufia said:
I'm going to have to say no.
Hell i want to by hatred out of spite to gamers.
Interesting video. But some of it doesn't really add up. Why would a PR rep risk getting their client's game banned? Because they'd get their asses sued off and probably would have to close.
I think there's a lot of hindsight "Oh I meant to do that!"
Having said that, I'm sure notoriety does help sell a few thousand spite copies. But I can't imagine a company would bet their entire product line on something as fluid as censorship.
 

Ryan Hughes

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AzrealMaximillion said:
What's come of this Suikoden Revival Movement? I've never even heard of it. Just did a quick search and can't find anything that came as a result of it.


OP: There have been plenty of Petitions that worked in the Gaming Industry. Remember that group of knuckleheads that got GTA V banned from Target Australia.

See? Progess :)
I am running a twitter campaign this weekend if you want to join in. As far as "what we are doing," that is difficult to answer, as we have to update our goals in light of the releases, and we are all overworked on the project, anyway. Though, Suikoden III's release in the PAL-regions has become the clear community priority. We will be doing other things, too, like conducting interviews with Japanese staff members, and have an ongoing art contest.

The Facebook serves as the main rallying point, though Twitter plays a larger role in campaigning nowadays.

Facebook.com/SuikodenRevival

SuikodenRevivalMovement.com

Shaun Kennedy said:
While I certainly see the impact of actual fan feedback being considered by companies, there is rarely acknowledgement of an organized petition or boycott being the root cause, even if one is present and the changes made, that may be more a case of correlation and not causation.
There is circumstantial evidence. But to believe that this would be correlations (plural) and not causation requires one to adhere to an ever-increasing set of unlikely circumstances. In the case of OpRain, Nintendo had long said that there were no plans to release Xenoblade in America, despite it already being localized and voice-acted for Britain and Australia, et al. Then, you would have to believe that Nintendo -unprecedentedly- gave publication rights to GameStop for the title years later, all in ignorance of a fan movement that was vocal and consisted of more than 20,000 people, and had even produced mock-ups of special editions of the game, and met repeatedly with Nintendo representatives.

Same with Dark Souls PC. Same with the SRM. Though, I am biased on the SRM, so you needn't feel compelled to take my word for it.
 

Lufia Erim

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Silentpony said:
LegendOfLufia said:
I'm going to have to say no.
Hell i want to by hatred out of spite to gamers.
Interesting video. But some of it doesn't really add up. Why would a PR rep risk getting their client's game banned? Because they'd get their asses sued off and probably would have to close.
I think there's a lot of hindsight "Oh I meant to do that!"
Having said that, I'm sure notoriety does help sell a few thousand spite copies. But I can't imagine a company would bet their entire product line on something as fluid as censorship.[/quote

Personally, i think there is no such thing as bad publicity. Not only for games but for companies. I believe the next game the devs of Hatred will get a lot of buzz just because they are the developpers of Hatred. Gamers are like children, tell then the shouldn't see something and they want it more. But remember it's just a theory, a game theory.
 

Ihateregistering1

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Sure. I mean, people have already pointed out a bunch of them:
-Dark Souls getting ported to PC.
-The Xbox One changes
-The Diablo III auction house.

but this leaves out what is the most obvious one: sequels (and to some degree DLC). How often in sequels have they fixed or changed something that people hated or complained about from the first (or previous) game(s)? I'd say you see it constantly, even if it is sometimes just small stuff.

-People complained that you couldn't drive and shoot in Far Cry 3? Now you can in Far Cry 4.
-People complained that you couldn't just destroy vehicles when you were on them (instead of hijacking them) in Prototype? You could in Prototype 2.
-People asked for Kenshi and Rain in MK9? Kenshi and Rain are DLC.
-People complained about how terrible the boss fights were in Deus Ex: Human Revolution? Devs completely revamped and changed them in the Director's Cut.

The list goes on and on really. Ultimately, that's devs listening to people's complaints (and, on some occasions, petitions) and doing something with it.
 

Gladion

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Silentpony said:
Interesting video. But some of it doesn't really add up. Why would a PR rep risk getting their client's game banned? Because they'd get their asses sued off and probably would have to close.
Why do you think that? Worst case scenario, the game wouldn't have been allowed to be sold in one country. What would DMA have been sued for?

OT: Yes, people have mentioned examples where it has worked before. But even if it never had, that'd be a pretty bad reason not to try it again.
 

Erttheking

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Of course they work, they work at the time.

I just wish people would stop call it bullying when it's something they didn't particularly agree with.
 

BathorysGraveland2

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Well... we did get Dark Souls on the PC. Which in turn got the sequel a launch release for PC. Other than that, nothing really comes to mind. The theory of boycotts and petitions may be logical, but not enough people tend to take part for them to be worthwhile. So what if a thousand people stops buying your games due to moral reasons? There's a million others still buying!

The exceptions tends to be like Dark Souls, where people want what is currently not available. Then the petitions will fly.