Dangit2019 said:
Has there ever been a VG boycott that worked, like, ever? I still go back to the old L4D2 threads just to have a laugh at the "boycotters" who have L4D2 on their steam profiles.
For me the big lol boycott was the MASSIVE "Boycott MW2" group on Steam; day one, roughly half of them were playing. And you know, I think that's the biggest part of where the whole "Quit whining, you know you'll buy it anyway" thing came from anyway. We all have this image of people proclaiming that they're going to boycott a game, yet when the chips are down, they're standing in line outside of Gamestop for the midnight release.
Speaking of, while I can agree with Jim's points about boycotts not being effective in the gaming industry, I'm still going to stand by my boycott of Gamestop. After-all, I can still get my games from plenty of other sources; which I think makes a point for WHY boycotting a game doesn't work. I can't buy the EA-published version of Transformers: War for Cybertron to send the message that I hate Activision; and like Jim said, if people just don't buy the game, then Activision (and other companies) will just take that as a message that it isn't the kind of game we want. Meanwhile, the MASSIVE horde of people who aren't really aware of the greater picture in the gaming world (I'm reluctant to call them "casual" gamers, because there's too much inconsistency with what the term actually means) will continue to snatch-up the latest Call of Duty, sending the message that that IS the kind of game we want; because it's what's selling.
In short, our boycotts tend to get silenced by the fact that not everyone who buys games knows, or even gives a shit, about which publishers are good and bad. And by "not everyone", I mean "the majority of people who buy video games".