• theneverfox
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    1 year ago

    Try this on for size. Split them up, make them worker owned, or strip their IP and open source it. Send a message that anti consumer behavior is dangerous - that your investments could go to zero.

    Blizzard and Activision stood up there at the ftc and promised their merger would lead to better products at better prices for customers. Their customers overwhelmingly disagree. Microsoft and Activision/Blizzard said the same. It’s all worse and more expensive.

    Companies exist for people, not the other way around. They don’t have rights, they don’t have feelings, and if we do nothing everything we love will turn to shit.

    We’re in the endgame. Companies are cannibalizing themselves and each other to desperately extend their profit growth for one more quarter. Not to mention, they do that by squeezing their customers just a little harder from all sides

    We need rules and boundaries to the game, or this becomes the only workable playstyle for the board of every publicly traded corporation. We’re going to crash - we’ve colonized the whole world (or at least every place with resources highly profitable to extract). The rate of growth can’t increase - new markets and technologies will open up areas for growth now and then, but certainly not quarterly. Cannibalizing existing industries is going pretty damn fast, and either we stop it now or we stop it once everything is terrible and our technology sucks.

    Either way, we’re going to have to tackle climate change and inequality…

    • blazera@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      You seem to be ranting about something else entirely, we’re talking about an announced price for a game

      • theneverfox
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        1 year ago

        Could you provide me an example of when voting with your wallet worked?

        • blazera@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Sure. See, im not gonna buy this game, and Im gonna still have my $90 dollars.

          Someone else who does want that early access for $90 will get what they want.

          • theneverfox
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            1 year ago

            That’s not even you voting with your wallet. That’s just you not buying a thing because it’s too expensive. That’s an example of price elasticity

            Voting with your wallet is this flawed concept that consumers can control companies through individuals boycotting their products.

            For example, I uninstalled hearthstone and quit Blizzard along with many others back when they let China censor a US esports player who commented on Hong Kong protests. But now I wouldn’t buy anyways, because their games suck and their payment schemes are obscene

            All they know is they lost n customers in that time period, and failed to recover m

            • blazera@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              That’s just you not buying a thing because it’s too expensive.

              yeah, that’s what Im doing. I am not hurt in anyway by not buying this thing, no one is making me buy it. That is an option for literally everyone, no one has to buy it. Im not a protesting activist trying to change Blizzard, Im simply not affected by this. The only people that are, are people that want to pay $90 for early access. If they dont want to, nobody is making them.

              • theneverfox
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                1 year ago

                Yeah, that’s fine. I’m also not interested, because i don’t play wow anymore

                But the phrase “voting with your wallet” is a term loaded with a narrative to justify everything under capitalism, from anti-consumer behaviors to blaming working people for climate change. Neoconservatives and Libertarians use the idea for how deregulation and privitization is the solution to everything

                You don’t seem to believe in that nonsense, so I’d encourage you to not use the phrase

                  • theneverfox
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                    1 year ago

                    Huh, yeah fair enough, your post just had that energy.

                    I mean, obviously you don’t have to buy a game, but saying just “you don’t have to buy the product from the company being anti-consumer” sounds a lot like a defense of them, you know?

      • theneverfox
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        1 year ago

        Could you explain to me how changing more for less is a good thing here?