Will Boycotting a video game EVER work?

[thom_cat_]

The L4D2 boycott was not about L4D2, even though the game isn't that great, it is still a good game. it was about L4D1 and the failure to pull through on any promises, and the ones that were completed were done poorly.

The boycott is still running, but the leaders just ran away.
And last time I looked through the first 10/700 or so pages of members only 6 were playing the L4D2 demo.

700 people won't be enough considering sales are counted in millions...

Uhhh 700 pages of people.
Bringing a grand total 35,588 Members...
Sorry for this bump, but I couldn't let him get away with his ignorance
I mean 700 is 1.97% of 35,588 that's a pretty big margin of error
And that's a culled figure too, because they have been banning any trolls posting in the comments.

I'm sorry, but that still isn't enough. Refer to the slightly more educated post before it about activism and how lazy the standard person is. When game sales are measured in millions of copies sold it takes steadfast devotion of a couple hundred thousand, if not millions in themselves, to make a significant difference in such a manner. It would take a couple hundred thousand protesters standing out there. At the GameStop. At the Wal-Mart. At the K Mart. At the family game store. They have to actively boycott the game. They have to convince others not to buy the game. They have to protest in a way that people, not on the internet, will see it and decide to side with them. They have to significantly reduce the sales of the game and make sure the developers know exactly why the game was boycotted. People are lazy though. People will sit on their computer and complain all day long, but at the end of the night they're still playing Modern Warfae 2, they're still holding that pre-order ticket for L4D2, they're still not doing anything to change what they feel is being done agaisnt them. You have 35,500 people. Good start. Keep going. Get the ball rolling. Snowball it. Otherwise noting will ever change and your complaints will go ignored against the sound of cash flow.

I do agree.
But since the leaders left, everything in that area has stopped.
At least 80%+ are not buying the game, but that still leaves out 20% and all the people who are not in the boycott.

L4D2 hasn't been much of a success so far, the demo has been a let down for many people surprisingly I thought it was going to be awesome, but it was pretty poor with the oversized guns and shit like that.
We need to do more, but we can't, because of the negative attitude towards us.
Everybody automatically assumes that we all hate L4D2, when in all reality its the failure that is L4D1 that is pissing us off.

 

[Doug]

Sadly, no, it'll never work, even after Act-inf-o-ward bastardised the PC version of MW2.

 

[Urgh76]

Um no.... duh a game will always find a way to sell no matter how many people disapprove of it. that's why we have those ratings

 

[Russian_Assassin]

No. No it won't. I could spend an entire night analyzing it, but I won't. And there's fuckall you can do about it!

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

It depends on the defintion of "work". One can make a publisher/developer take closer look at what they're doing without much effort, but to have any hope of real impact the boycott must represent a meaningful loss in customers.

A few thousand or ten thousand people in a game that sold more than four million copies (MW2) in 24 hours is meaningless in the grand scheme of things.

 

[willsham45]

in left for dead to a group thought they thought there game was wrongly done to, they acted on it, the thret was out, they got a responce from the develiper and all the things they were worried about were sorted.
That means it worked.

Boycotting a game is not just we are not going to buy it who is with me. you have to have reson why so the develper takes the thret and acts on it.

 

[BloodSquirrel]

This is the question I'm facing here, with two recent boycotts of CoD:MW2 and L4D2, and the seeming fact that it won't do squat. I mean, the Left 4 Dead 2 boy-cotters were over 37,000 strong at one point, but after the leaders of it played the actual game, they disbanded the group. Then there's the Modern Warfare 2 boycott, which did nothing to stop it from selling over 7 million in it's first day alone. So, with these two boycott groups doing not much to the cause, (MW2 more, considering Valve's ears), how can boycotting a video game ever work?

See, the problem here is that people are misusing the term "boycott". You don't boycott something because you don't like the product, you boycott a company because of some other behavior they're engaging in that you wish to stop, like baby punching. I'm not going to buy MW2 because, quite frankly, it's not worth the money.

Developers are well aware of the fact that any decision they make will have people who like it and people who don't like it. These "boycotts" are just telling them something they already know, and 37,000 people who *might* not buy the game are small numbers compared to the people who they expect *will* buy the game.

Meanwhile, if a game doesn't impress enough people, it fails to sell and companies take notice.

 

[Nautical Honors Society]

This is the question I'm facing here, with two recent boycotts of CoD:MW2 and L4D2, and the seeming fact that it won't do squat. I mean, the Left 4 Dead 2 boy-cotters were over 37,000 strong at one point, but after the leaders of it played the actual game, they disbanded the group. Then there's the Modern Warfare 2 boycott, which did nothing to stop it from selling over 7 million in it's first day alone. So, with these two boycott groups doing not much to the cause, (MW2 more, considering Valve's ears), how can boycotting a video game ever work?

Why were people boycotting L4D2?

 

[Zeromaeus]

This is the question I'm facing here, with two recent boycotts of CoD:MW2 and L4D2, and the seeming fact that it won't do squat. I mean, the Left 4 Dead 2 boy-cotters were over 37,000 strong at one point, but after the leaders of it played the actual game, they disbanded the group. Then there's the Modern Warfare 2 boycott, which did nothing to stop it from selling over 7 million in it's first day alone. So, with these two boycott groups doing not much to the cause, (MW2 more, considering Valve's ears), how can boycotting a video game ever work?

Why were people boycotting L4D2?

HOnestly, I don't know. I like L4D. Its fun. My friends play it with every now again and that experience is great.

 

[Nautical Honors Society]

This is the question I'm facing here, with two recent boycotts of CoD:MW2 and L4D2, and the seeming fact that it won't do squat. I mean, the Left 4 Dead 2 boy-cotters were over 37,000 strong at one point, but after the leaders of it played the actual game, they disbanded the group. Then there's the Modern Warfare 2 boycott, which did nothing to stop it from selling over 7 million in it's first day alone. So, with these two boycott groups doing not much to the cause, (MW2 more, considering Valve's ears), how can boycotting a video game ever work?

Why were people boycotting L4D2?

HOnestly, I don't know. I like L4D. Its fun. My friends play it with every now again and that experience is great.

Oh, is there like any content reason like MW2?

 

[Zeromaeus]

This is the question I'm facing here, with two recent boycotts of CoD:MW2 and L4D2, and the seeming fact that it won't do squat. I mean, the Left 4 Dead 2 boy-cotters were over 37,000 strong at one point, but after the leaders of it played the actual game, they disbanded the group. Then there's the Modern Warfare 2 boycott, which did nothing to stop it from selling over 7 million in it's first day alone. So, with these two boycott groups doing not much to the cause, (MW2 more, considering Valve's ears), how can boycotting a video game ever work?

Why were people boycotting L4D2?

HOnestly, I don't know. I like L4D. Its fun. My friends play it with every now again and that experience is great.

Oh, is there like any content reason like MW2?

From what I understand its one of two things:
1. L4D2 isn't different/advanced enough from L4D
2. L4D dissappointed certain people and they're still pissed

 

[HaloHappy]

This is the question I'm facing here, with two recent boycotts of CoD:MW2 and L4D2, and the seeming fact that it won't do squat. I mean, the Left 4 Dead 2 boy-cotters were over 37,000 strong at one point, but after the leaders of it played the actual game, they disbanded the group. Then there's the Modern Warfare 2 boycott, which did nothing to stop it from selling over 7 million in it's first day alone. So, with these two boycott groups doing not much to the cause, (MW2 more, considering Valve's ears), how can boycotting a video game ever work?

Why were people boycotting L4D2?

I have no clue. After it was announced at E3 of this year, it brought a lot of outrage from the community and some guys got annoyed with it and made complaints and suggestions. Some of them Valve looked at and took the advice and put them into the game.

 

[MoNkEyMaFiA]

I boycotted buying MW2 and someone brought it for me as a early Crimbo Present lol.
And yes I was weak and played it..Multi player IS CRAP!!..its only good games I had was
when one of my friends played Spec-op Co-op missions with me.

 

[Captain_Caveman]

This is the question I'm facing here, with two recent boycotts of CoD:MW2 and L4D2, and the seeming fact that it won't do squat. I mean, the Left 4 Dead 2 boy-cotters were over 37,000 strong at one point, but after the leaders of it played the actual game, they disbanded the group. Then there's the Modern Warfare 2 boycott, which did nothing to stop it from selling over 7 million in it's first day alone. So, with these two boycott groups doing not much to the cause, (MW2 more, considering Valve's ears), how can boycotting a video game ever work?

Where have you been the past couple years?

It already HAS worked.

Remember SecuROM & limited installs? Remember the mass boycott, debate, 1 star amazon ratings, huge piracy numbers, etc..?

EA released patches removing them.
And now EA doesn't use EITHER. Just a simple CD-Key check.

P.S. The Left 4 Dead boycott ended because Valve promised L4D would get at least as much support as TF2 has/is getting.

They also promised L4D mods would be compatible w/ L4D2, so that modders can continue their mods & finish them; and so they can be enjoyed by everyone w/o fracturing the community. Them showing the steam group leaders the game was just something else that happened during the discussion; not the primary objective of flying them out.

 

[MR T3D]

but when they could easily be revolutionize how online games are played for your system in a detrimental manner, then there's a good excuse.
IE: IWnet.
but it was a useless gesture, the biggest game of the season can easily do away with the HC PC gamers whom still play previous instalments.

Hmmn, yeah but a lot of people still bought CoD:MW2 so are people really that upset? There's a lot of things I don't like about gaming, for example how when you buy a Valve game off the shelf you don't get the whole game, just 95% of you need the other 5% off of Steam and you can't even play your game without an internet connection or without steam holding your hand. But what are you going to do?

And maybe the IWNet model is detrimental to the game but until the day comes when all companies follow that same model gamer's still have their choice. PC Gamers can still grab games that allow 3rd party content and new map packs instead of DLC and so forth.


DLC is a bit of a joke anyway imo. If a game disallows 3rd party content and instead distributes new maps via DLC then okay, the mod community is screwed. But if that DLC is instead something like an addition to the story, some actual professionally-created game play and maybe includes a few new map packs and instead the DLC is called say a sequel or a new episode then people will still buy it even if 3rd party mods are being created.

Basically if the DLC is worthwhile people will get it regardless of player-created content (or maybe the so-called DLC is sold in stores as an addon).

the ting is HC PC gamers are a small minority, and at best could reduce sales by 100,000, actual number probably onfor a game that sold nearly OVER 9,000,0000 copies by now.
other developers ARE interested in the viability of the model being used here, so that's reason to worry.
except DICE won't, so there's always battlefield!

 

[irishstormtrooper]

It can't. For every person who gets upset about a minuscule wrongdoing to them, there are several others who are perfectly willing to look past the problems and play a good game. Boycotts do nothing, and the boycotters are just idiots.

 

[Idocreating]

Boycotts only work when it's a huge majority doing the boycotting.

If 1% of a playerbase boycotts, the company won't lose diddly.
If 90% of a playerbase boycotts, the company will fix things fast.

Most players aren't into such things though, they won't boycott games as they don't see the point in doing so, also they just want to play a game.

 

[necromanzer52]

There was a modern warfare 2 boycott? Why?