We need to be blunt right from the start–the internet is not the nicest place out there. Some have called it a cesspool due to how certain people love to rant about things without fairness, logic, and a complete bias fueling their words. You may know them as trolls, and they come in all shapes and sizes, part of various communities around the world wide web. The video game community is not immune to this, having been host to many attacks on players and developers themselves. Many recent attacks, for example, have been aimed at Apex Legends developer Respawn Entertainment.
The situation got so bad for the team that they had to issue a statement talking about their zero-tolerance policy against harassment. This is something that they honestly shouldn’t have had to do, but that’s the situation they’re in. To be clear, the attackers weren’t going for Respawn as a whole–they were going after the Apex Legends team for one reason or another. It got so bad that rapper T-Pain spoke on the matter. He is a diehard gamer and wasn’t going to stand by as haters and trolls hurt the devs.
“Play something else if you hate it so much bro. Walk away from your pc/console if you’ve become so consumed by a game that you feel the need to threaten the ppl that work hard to make it.”
He’s right. If you, or someone you know, is so obsessed with a video game that you feel the only fair recourse is to attack the dev team for something you think they did wrong, you need to step away. There is a difference between constructive criticism and just throwing hate at a dev team.
For example, games like Apex Legends have been known to have all sorts of bugs within them. A gamer calling out these bugs and spelling out what needs fixing isn’t wrong in context. The devs encourage it so that they know what to fix and how many people are getting that issue.
However, if you feel the team should be doing something that you alone feel is right and then attack the team for not listening to you, that’s a problem. Or if you throw hate at the team for not releasing an update right away, even though they’re testing it to make sure it works right, that’s a problem.
Never forget that these are industry professionals, they are the ones who work countless hours to make the games you enjoy. They want you to be happy with their product and will fix the mistakes they make. They don’t need hate thrown at them just because someone out there feels they deserve it. There’s enough hate in the world right now, please don’t add to it.
Source: Twiter
