The #ADayOffTwitch protests inaction on harassment.
Tag: Protest
WoW Players Protest Activision Abuses
Many are cancelling their subscriptions and riding out the time.
[Hearthstone] American Team Displays “Free Hong Kong” Sign At Match
Blizzard just can’t catch a break. When the dumpster fire that was Blizzard’s PR kerfuffle occurred yesterday, folks like myself noted that if Blizzard thought the situation would get better, they were dead wrong. If anything, it’s going to get worse. Much worse.
Following the news that Blizzard had banned a Hearthstone player and rescinded his tournament winnings over comments in support of Hong Kong, and then fired the two broadcasters interviewing him, the news has been rolling in of more PR fallout. Over the course of yesterday, Blizzard employees covered up company signs in protest, the Hearthstone Reddit has been overwhelmed with boycott posts, and Blizzard locked down its own subreddit in an attempt at damage control.
The latest to come out was an American team in the Collegiate Championship held up a sign during their match that said “Free Hong Kong, boycott Blizzard.” As you would expect, the stream immediately cuts away. You can find the stream at the link above. The team had already lost the game at the point where they held up the sign.
Blizzcon begins the first weekend of November. It should be fun.
Mass Effect 3: The Right Way To Protest
Here at MMO Fallout, I’ve devised a sport known as “competitive charity,” a corporate sport where the rules are simple: Donate more than anyone else to a respectable charity and you win the prize. What is the prize? We haven’t figured that out yet, but it is in progress. So far, competitive charity has been extremely successful, with a majority of the companies listed here at MMO Fallout participating on an occasional basis.
Over at Bioware, the Mass Effect community decided to express its outrage at the ending of Mass Effect 3 in the only way it knows how: Throwing the rules of competitive charity right out the window and starting up a charity fund. So far, over two thousand contributors have donated more than fifty three thousand dollars to Child’s Play. Sure, it’s an odd marriage: The joy of charity and the general useless endeavor that is an internet protest.
This is my kind of protest, and I’m sure Child’s Play is just as happy as I am to see the money rolling. The charity drive runs until April 11th. If you want to chip in, or just want to donate to Child’s Play, click below. I will also have a counter running on the side of MMO Fallout until the charity ends.
(Source: Child’s Play)
Thirty Thousand Man March: Chinese Aion Protest
Over in China, Aion follows the suit of many other MMOs: A major bot problem. This isn’t necessarily due to NCsoft “not caring” about the gold farmers, but rather the enormous market compared to services in the West that brings in a substantial profit margin and results in a flood of input into a system that is already large enough to explode. It’s important to remember a major facet of gold farming: If there wasn’t any demand, there wouldn’t be any market for supply. But there will always be a demand, proportional to the size of the population, and legitimate players cannot be blamed for the actions of those who do buy from these services.
Players in China, however, decided that enough was enough, and staged a protest. MMOSITE estimates that there were thirty thousand people in attendance, in a protest that spanned numerous cities and lagged those areas to a slow crawl. Players created new toons adorned with names like “no bots” and “ban the bots.” Eventually, at least four servers buckled under the strain and had to be taken down for maintenance.
Of course, this inevitably received the attention of NCSoft, who attempted to disperse the crowd by spawning several Grand Chieftain Saendukals (boss), which the swarms of players quickly overtook.
You can read the entire story here: http://news.mmosite.com/content/2010-04-12/30000_aion_players_protest_bots_led_to_servers_down.shtml#ue_pic
Hopefully this sent a clear message to NCsoft to ramp up the anti-bot operations over in China. Here in North America/Europe, the bot problem isn’t nearly as large and NCsoft has brought in the G-Unit to bust gold farming. I’m not certain if there is a similar system in China.
More in Aion as it appears.
MMO Fallout 