Wallet Voting

A common reaction to any dick moves made by publishers or game companies is to tell people to vote with their wallets and simply not buy the offending games. There’s also quite a large amount of gamers out there that complain about the fact that we are still buying games from those companies and are thereby telling them that their actions are OK. Those people surely have a point, just have a look at Modern Warfare 2. The game had record sales even though there were two public uproars connected to it: The price of the game was increased and dedicated server support was removed. The user score of the PC version on metacritic is a terrible 3.3 because of that uproar, yet the game sold like hotcakes. What gives?

First of all we have to realize that the majority of gamers doesn’t even know about these issues. They don’t read blogs, gaming news sites, or metacritic. They simply enjoy the Call of Duty series and bought the new title when it came out. Some might have been annoyed at the increased price, but most have enough disposable income to deal with a single extra payment of ten dollars. They don’t even think about the ramifications that this might have. Essentially, every boycott of such a popular franchise is doomed to fail on the fact alone that most buyers won’t even know that there is a reason for boycott.

Then there’s the issue of buying those games even though you are aware of the issue. Me, I’ll absolutely buy both Starcraft II and Fallout: New Vegas, no matter how much I disagree with the publisher’s policies. I don’t believe it would have any effect if I didn’t buy them, and if it has any, it will surely be outweighed by the loss of fun that I’d have if I didn’t buy these games. I really wish I could vote with my wallet and tell Activision and Ubisoft to go to hell, but I can’t. Sure, if I’m undecided on buying a title, an Activision logo on the box might push me into a certain direction and I’m really only buying those games because of the Blizzard and Bethesda logos respectively, but ultimately the evil giants will still get my money.

I hate that it is that way, but I don’t really see a solution. Piracy is out of the question and so is not buying those big titles. All I have left is to rant about those companies on my blog. Fat load of good that will do.