PirateSoftware Leaves OffBrand Games as Stop Killing Games Reaches Goal
Pirate Software Leaves Off Brand Games as Stop Killing Games Reaches Goal
I'm pretty sure this is the same guy who was ranting about Godot "being woke" last year lol
The review bombing is another fabrication:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2217000/Rivals_of_Aether_II/?curator_clanid=45028385
It seems like a minor influx of recent negative reviews. Most likely they didn't want his current status in the public perception to work against the marketing push they wanted from him.
Because let's be real, "director of strategy" doesn't seem accurate for someone who is obviously just an influencer marketing your game to his large audience.
Reviews since July first look at least 50% negative which was not seen before so there could be an argument it is happening.
More than 0 reviews related to the drama = review bombing
He worked at blizzard for 7 years guys.
(the link is for the past week, so will be less and less accurate to the july first start date as the days pass by)
The only two reviews related to the drama are specifically in reaction to the alleged review bombing. The other negative reviews don't mention anything related to the drama at all, and so the increase is probably just due to the streisand effect.
I'll list the two drama-related reviews here trimmed down to the drama-relevant parts only (not the full reviews):
"Drumming up fake drama about a review bombing that never happened to artificially inflate your positive review count through fan counteraction is gross." — Full Review
"Wasn't gonna leave a review but Ludwig and Pirate Software cried review bombing so I'm leaving an honest review to combat the non-existent bombing." — Full Review
As you can see by these excerpts, both of them were made AFTER the allegations of review bombing. They're not part of the review bombing itself that was being talked about.
Edit: fixed inaccurate -> accurate
Had a look at Offbrand Games' games and none of them have recent review bombs. I really have no clue what PirateSoftware is talking about.
I'm not surprised he was pushed out for fear of such review bombs, but I'm not seeing any evidence of them actually existing as he alleges.
He's making shit up, as always.
So... I actually tinker around in Godot.
Whilst looking around to see if anyone had, or was developing an extension I would find useful...
I discovered 'Redot'.
Basically, there is a small but very vocal group of people who are very, very angry that a Godot community manager made some pro LGBT, inclusive twitter posts, turned that into a culture war flare up on twitter...
And then forked Godot.
To make the anti-woke version of Godot.
Their youtube channel has, as best I can tell, absolutely no descriptions of any substantial differences from... you know, an actual game engine feature set perspective.
Beyond of course being behind Godot now, lol.
What they do have is a bunch of rants about politics and edrama for their 'non-political' game engine.
Also... they pronounce Redot as Re-Dot, hard t.
Godot is Godot as in Waiting for Godot.
Go - Dough. God - Oh.
The t is silent.
... of course these idiots are literally uncultured and have never read the screenplay or seen the stage play, so they have no idea how to pronounce the word.
Could have gone with Re - Do, or Re - Dough, those would have been closer, the first at least an obvious allusion to them being a Godot fork.
But no. Re Dot.
smdh
Okay, as much as I approve of mocking bigots, I didn't pronounce "Godot" properly for a few years because I had never heard the name spoken before. I'd only ever read it.
Usually, if a word is used properly, but pronounced wrong, it's an indicator that the word was learned from reading, not from hearing. Typically, people receptive to learning will try to correct themselves when it's pointed out. I'm very self conscious of this because I'm awful at pronouncing words.
But for folks like this, yeah, mock the hell out of them.
Usually, if a word is used properly, but pronounced wrong, it's an indicator that the word was learned from reading, not from hearing
I love when I hear folks do this. It always gives me a little wholesome bump that it's from reading.
Lol grew up reading a lot of books and such, so very similar and I am usually bad at assumed pronunciation, such as godot which I just learned thanks to this thread.
Also, “dot” with a hard T is like super common in programming naming. It’s a pretty reasonable mistake to make.
What you're saying is true, that not knowing how to pronounce aloud a word you've only ever read is not some kind of 100% surefire sign you're a bigot or anything like that.
It just means, as you say, that you've never heard it said aloud.
But... that also means you never bothered to look up how it is pronounced (its on wikipedia, the actual Godot devs have videos of them saying it, etc)... and it does also mean you presumably are also unfamiliar with Waiting for Godot.
So I would say you are also 'uncultured' in that way, but of course, simply being uncultured doesn't make one a bigot.
You could just not have the time, money, etc, to have seen the play before.
That by no means say anything else really concrete about you, or any other person, if that's like... the only single datapoint you know about them.
In all seriousness, I do strongly recommend seeing the actual play, probably you could find a dramatic reading / radio drama version of it somewhere on the net, or even a full video captured performance of it on a forgotten youtube channel or the Internet Archive.
I... don't know that its ever been adapted as a proper movie, perhaps a film snob can appear and call me uncultured, haja!
Go - Dough. God - Oh.
Or even "g'dough", either way the T is always silent.
Most of the folks I've heard making tutorials about it pronounce it "guhDOUGH." To get that FOSS cred the name has to be a dumpster fire.
I'll say it that way sometimes, haha!
I also have a tendency to shorten 'good night' and 'good morning' and even 'good to see you!' into just basically g' with a glottal stop, haha.
Redot still exists? I expected it to die off after a month max
Perhaps Thor is Pozzo.
He's still financially involved with the publisher.
Don't review bomb them, just don't buy from them.
That's not the right thing to do.
There are more people behind the publisher than him. He's not big enough of a douche to make them all pay for it.
Impact is there, he got what he asked for. We're done here.
Sorry, but anyone taking up space in my pigeon brain is "big enough" to be petty. I don't know what qualifies as big enough for you though.
And just to be clear, I'm just talking about boycotting, not leaving nasty reviews or messages.
It's the right thing to do in my not-so humble option.
Elon Musk owns "only" 20% 10% of Tesla and I would never buy a car from them because of that. There are probably hundred thousands of workers involved with the company.
Jason Hall probably still owns 50% of the company with only a handful of people involved. Why should I not boycott them?
They got 6, count them SIX, negative reviews in one day. Such review bombing, indeed.
Wait, did PirateSoftware rant about wokeness, or are you confusing him with fellow failed game dev Grummz?
I don’t like him. Never have, never will.
no idea who he is, should I care?
No.
yeah, same!
His defense of Godot and his stance on the attacks, seem very reasonable and correct: Clip 1, Clip 2. Nothing like what you remember, OP.
Separating from Off Brand Games to protect them of the fallout of his opinions and public exposure also seems like a correct decision.
Edit: fixed second link
Just a heads up, your two clips are linking to the same vid
Oh thanks, the second clip is actually here. I'll fix it in parent in a minute.
The YouTuber noted that his opinion on the initiative has led players to review-bomb the company's new releases. To avoid further harm to their reputation, he's terminated the partnership indefinitely. "I am no longer working at Offbrand Games,"
The damage is done now. He isn't likable, took a big loss on his part, almost took down his collabs with himself.
Let this be a lesson in being humble about your public appearence. He's essentially being featured in some questionable forums, I believe. This was absolutely not worth it for him.
I don't understand why he's getting flamed so hard. I get that it's an unpopular take, but the reaction is way overboard. Why is the community like this?
It's not just because of his stance on SKG. That's just a catalyst.
He's curated this image of being some kind of industry guru, through carefully edited shorts, appeal to authority fallacies and thorough moderation of dissenting opinion.
Because this is the first time (I'm aware of) he's taken such a strong contrary position to a popular argument, it's caused people to look closer and pull back the curtain.
What they've discovered is that they've been lied to (by the "hacker" who gained access via social engineering), and that's what pisses people off.
The criticism of his character has been around for a long time, but his message was always louder. Until now.
Unpopular take is a bit of an understatement. He called the entire movement shit and trashtalked it instead of just disagreeing. He also, after all the responses, doubled down and said he hopes "the movement gets want it wants, but not what it needs."
It's also not really a one off situation from PirateSoftware
This just served as a way for others to shed light on how scummy he is as a person in general.
Drama aside, I'm just glad to read the goal was reached. Hopefully something comes of the effort.
Pretty weird guy, honestly. Seems competent, but spends too much time complaining about other people instead of working on his own stuff.
Woah, how can you say that? Don't you know he worked for blizzard!
He did? Weird, never mentioned it.
Blizzard's last good release was Overwatch (2016), which they have subsequently completely ruined (in my opinion) so I wouldn't be proud of having worked there unless it was a long time ago 😅
Exactly, seems competent. But only seems, he's a narcissistic nepobaby who just can't admit he's in the wrong be it in video games or real life.
I just can't understand why anyone would follow a piece of shit like him
Are his parents rich?
You might be right, but I don't believe you have any frame of reference to determine that he's not competent. How much of his actual work have you reviewed?
Review bomb where? On their page they link to Steam, where they have one released game (95% positive) and two demos (one unrated, second 90% positive).
Godot being woke? Wtf?
OP is mistaken. PirateSoftware defended Godot official and pointed out the actual perpetrator of hate was a mod of an unofficial fan discord. Someone else posted a clip of it in this thread.
I guess they woke up and made a good open source game engine?
That actually happened, but not from this PirateSoftware guy. The anti-woke godoters made their own fork, Redot, which, as you might have expected, doesn't do jack shit other than offering cosmetic changes
Honestly, very smart and humble move, he certainly got hit with a ton of bad press for his opposition to the petition and that would have impacted the game studio's sales.
So I’m confused what exactly did he dislike about the movement? Seems like a solid one to me.
its difficult to know why he did what he did because he apparently misinterpreted what the point of the petition is and then spiraled right down a toilet from there
Basically he is not happy with the wording of the initiative. He had a 10 minute follow up video after he had a knee jerk reaction and went to into personal attacks against the guy that thought of the movement.
I'm going to get to roasted for this but watching his video I see what he's worried about. I agree that this industry has scummy practices but this bill is going to be a monkeys paw scenario.
I would love for this bill to go through in a perfect world but as of now companies are doing layoffs and closing and adding in more red tap and financial burden will mean more projects will be cancelled or won't be released in certain areas because it's not going to be financially viable.
I'm open to have my mind changed as I don't have any insight on what happens behind the scenes in these operations but I think people looked at a PowerPoint that said "gamers are getting fucked over" (which is true when live service games close) and signed something that COULD make studios rally around their legal team and financial departments to make things worse.
Pirate also didn't do himself favors by being not media trained and careful with his words but now he's dealing with SWATing, death threats, harassment, and losing his job over an opinion that's honestly from a perspective of someone that has worked in that industry for a long while vs a community know for being miserable and ready with pitchforks over stupid shit.
What has this Pirate Software released? I'm not familiar with their games
Really? Most games I played in my life were pirated software.
"lol," I said, "lmao"
As far as I've seen, the only thing PirateSoftware did "wrong" was point out some unintentional consequences that would fall on indie developers given the language used in SKG as written, and get a bit personal in his criticism of Ross Scott, and everyone has lost their minds on the dude. Idgaf about personal beef between creators and I agree with his concerns for indie developers even though I still support the idea of SKG (there is a happy medium place to be found here). Even if I didn't, he's said nothing so inflammatory to the cause as to earn all this stupid drama. Chill the fuck out.
No. Everything he said about this initiative was wrong
So "eat my entire ass" is not inflammatory now? Good to know.
Even of he did not say that, if he really wanted to give positive criticism he wouldn't advocate against it entirely. Your happy medium is correct, he was 100% against it from the beginning.
Not coming from anger or anything like that, just pointing out that you implied he was in the happy medium when he isn't.
Let's brigade people more for speaking and thinking differently. There should only be one correct opinion and anyone who disagrees should be shunned.
You mean "lets have people say whatever they want without any consequences or repercussions, no matter how wrong or hurtful they are"?
Honestly I think Pirate Software was 90 percent in the wrong. He misunderstood the thrust of the Stop Killing Games movement and took his discourse too far.
I think it's a little gross how much we've chosen to pile on as a community.
In the real world we have in front of us some of the ideas put forth by Stop Killing Games will actually be hard for companies to implement. I don't feel bad for them nor do I support the murder of games. It's just not a simple prospect.
your takeaway from individual people being unhappy after everything that has come to light about an individual popular person is missing the actual situation/thing that is happening right in front of you? quite a bit more went on than "differing opinion" and even then people are luckily allowed to be upset and it is even easy to understand when it is an influential person, welcome to the internet.
My take way is a subset of people are (justifiably) unhappy with Pirate Software. He acted like a dick and someone in his position should have better articulated his arguments and been more open to dialogue.
It's also a little gross how many people are trying to pay their bills by stoking rage about this rather than moving the issue forward. And yes, I do understand that the rage is probably why this movement got past the goal posts.
I still think we need to self reflect as a community.
PS was gross, but we should be better.
welcome to the internet
Yeah, this is the sucky part about the modern internet. It used to be that the internet was a place for discussion and we've twisted it to a place to enforce conformity.
I don't know anything about this guy, so maybe there's a more established pattern here, but ideally we don't jump down someone's throat when they do one or two unpopular things, but instead wait for a pattern to emerge before getting out the pitchforks. But everyone needs to be first, because the first one gets the eyeballs and there's not much downside to ruining someone's reputation unnecessarily.
It's stupid and I hate it.
I don't like pirate software like any other guy, but I want to put credit where credit is due.
He wasn't ranting about Godot being woke last year. He was actually actively defending it from all the bigots. One of the very few YouTubers or streamers, I saw.
You have probably mistaken him with Asmongold. He has long hair too, and he is right wing nutjob pos.
Oh shoot, wasn't Asmongold censored out of the new bbno$ music video? There was some text at the start that said "I'm sorry, I didn't know about redacted's shitty views" and one of the people has a raptor image digitally inserted over his face for the whole video.