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Comment by QAPereo | Hacker News Reader

Death threats and abuse are a non-starter, but working on making more addictive games-cum-casinos should probably come with polite disdain. Given that so much in gaming has become a money grab from kids and people wired to gamble is, a shame.

So... death threats? Doxxing? Abuse? No, never.

Respect for a good job well done? Also no.

Hunting “whales” for vast profits is a good business model, but so is selling tobacco or opening a casino. I don’t know that pandering to addictive personalities, the young, the inexperienced, and the impulsive is a very good use of anyone’s talents. Worse, it’s going to turn s generation off the medium once they realize how abusive it’s becoming.

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Not all of the games involved were mtx-based. One was more like "you screwed up the IP I love, die!"

edit: Also, it is profoundly unhelpful to the discussion to say what you said, which is basically "Well, what did you expect, a pat on the back?"

We're talking here about abuse, not constructive criticism. Here's an analogy: Nobody expects an Oscar for working on Transformers 6, but personally subjecting them to online abuse for it is totally unacceptable. There's no need to come into the discussion and remind us that Transformers 6 is not likely to be a very good movie.

What I said was that everything from abuse to rudeness is simply wrong, and I made that point unambiguously, twice. You are right that I think there should be consequences for abusive practices, but reasonable ones, like what I’m doing right now. Making people feel worthless, insulting them, threatening them... is evil.

As for the people who send death treats over pure design choices, I have nothing, but sympathy for you.

Edit: No excuse for abuse, and I agree with your point about shitty movies. It is worth pointing out however, that movies don’t generally attempt to become lengthy addictions which siphon potentially ruinous sums of money over time; there is generally no attempt at behavior modification for profit.

Got it. I appreciate your point, though I don't fully agree about your characterization of f2p games and/or the developers thereof.

> We're talking here about abuse, not constructive criticism.

Some F2P is really good and improves the product. (Warframe) That's the exception however and most of it is in fact abusive. As such people upset about it don't expect constructive criticism to get anywhere and engage in behavior that amounts to, in their view, "eye for an eye".

Yes, the bad behaviour is well distributed allover the company. You cant blame a single gear for the functionality provided by the human-meat-grinder 40000.

If you really feel the need, blame the dedicated person for blaming, who gets a fortune for doing the Jesus Christ story as CEO.

Assaulting single persons, might be the only way to squeeze a touch of responsibility from a modern company. Touching a nerve is okay, when it leads to a thoroughly rotten teeth - like the pseudo moral everyone in the software world displays in this endless resultless discussions.

Oh, btw, in the next thread somebody is calling for goverment action against addicting games- and all those "abuse is evil" posters, will take a firm libertarian stand there.

If you systematicall disempower people, until only building a howling medieval mob remains- congrats, you reaached your destination.

I'm not sure why anyone is surprised about the addictive money grabbing nature of tech which is prevalent. This is a core fundament of the capitalist system. Practically everything is geared towards increasing money. How many people do you know who have an employee/customer health and happiness tracker app compared to a stock price tracker app installed on their phone right now?

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