Streamer priority confirmed. PoE is free to play, so play it for free, but Boycott GGG.

I want to preface this by stating that I haven't logged-in this league even once (I take breaks from time to time, and skip a few leagues because all of the clicking in POE worsens my tendonitis). So no, I wasn't waiting in that abysmal queue like everyone else, I was doing other things at the time.

However, I felt like Chris's explanation of this debacle was forthright and genuine. He took personal responsibility by highlighting the hasty mistakes they (as a company) made, underestimated the effect it would have on the anger levels of the playerbase (GGG wrongly assumed there would be a semi-positive reaction to people being able to see Streamers play) and said they wouldn't repeat these 'mistakes' in the future given how much it offended everyone.

Honestly, what more could you ask of GGG than that? To rewrite history? To be burned at the proverbial stake for daring to make a boneheaded business decision? Bad decisions are made in the real world all of the time, but what doesn't always happen is a 'course correction.' Yet Chris is vowing to give us that 'course correction.' Most AAA gaming companies would laugh in the face of their customers before ever admitting wrongdoing in any shape or form, literally LAUGH OUT LOUD before admitting any semblance of guilt... but POE once had humble beginnings, and Chris knows they wouldn't have made it this far without us. Maybe what transpired that day wasn't all his decision, but he may have decided to take the 'heat' and 'blame' for it anyway since he's the public face of the game.

Do you expect everyone to be perfect, are 'you' perfect? Have you never made a bad decision under pressure before? Are you flawless and without blame? Chances are, no one is. While this set of circumstances was unfortunate, and I feel like Streamers get way too much credit for what they do, I don't feel like going full 'scorched earth' by not supporting GGG anymore is the right course of action for a mistake they won't be repeating in the future. That is just my two cents.

Edit: I also thought Charan/Foreverhappychan made a well-construed 'farewell post' a while back about not ever posting in these forums again? Or am I mistaken about that? I do remember a 'Goodbye' post of sorts https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2650059/page/1 by another user (please don't take this as me being accusatory or personally attacking you, I am just slightly confused to still see you around here after a big sendoff). Usually when I say I won't be coming back somewhere, you can guarantee I won't be coming back. So I'm not sure what made you change your mind. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong about this, as it was quite a while ago and I could be misremembering it (memory can be a funny thing).

If I stream does that mean t10+ maps will drop?

"

TheIronBankofBraavos wrote:

Edit: I also thought Charan/Foreverhappychan made a well-construed 'farewell post' a while back about not ever posting in these forums again? Or am I mistaken about that? I do remember a 'Goodbye' post of sorts https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2650059/page/1 by another user (please don't take this as me being accusatory or personally attacking you, I am just slightly confused to still see you around here after a big sendoff). Usually when I say I won't be coming back somewhere, you can guarantee I won't be coming back. So I'm not sure what made you change your mind. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong about this, as it was quite a while ago and I could be misremembering it (memory can be a funny thing).

I like your username.

Alright, so I've said before, somewhat tongue in cheek, that you're not really a regular of this forum until you've had at least one dramatic quit post, and I've had a bunch. I mean it every time as well, because each time it seems justified. And each time I return, give or take, also seems justified. The smart thing to do would be to never close the door but I'm the sort of person who can slam the door on someone I've known for years if they cross a certain line but online I absolutely suck at closure. There's always unfinished business. This is compounded by the fact that, like or not, I'm 'somebody' here. People do actually miss me when I'm gone, so being able to make them happy by returning is a bit like popping up at your own funeral and going SURPRISE NOT DEAD HI!...but inevitably it becomes obvious, no, you actually are dead and this is just a brief haunting.

What changed my mind this time? Pretty obvious isn't it? It took something unprecedented to bring me back. And even then my initial instinct was simply, 'well, glad I'm not a part of THAT shitshow anymore'. Buuuut I am. Once and future Ruler. I'm pretty much addicted to this role, and this is absolutely a relapse. And you know people never really stop being alcoholics or addicts, right? They're called 'recovering' for a reason. The only way to conclusively, absolutely quit something is to physically be unable to do it again, i.e. die. I'm not dead and something irresistible triggered my falling off the wagon: a chance to use my unique position to do what I believe is the right thing in this situation. Because I know if someone known to have spent literally a car's worth of money on supporting GGG says 'don't support them anymore', it means something. Were that merely empty hubris I wouldn't be getting messages on reddit and here, and this thread wouldn't have people posting when they normally wouldn't.

I own this relapse; I believe it was, perhaps for once, justified.

"

Bipolartuna wrote:

If I stream does that mean t10+ maps will drop?

I love your username. :)

Just to clarify: I absolutely do not believe GGG have modified anyone's in-game RNG. The risk of being caught doing so far outweighs the possible benefit. Not to mention I also believe most ardent PoE streamers are Exile enough that they wouldn't *want* that sort of unfair advantage. As I said before: life might not be fair for everyone (or anyone, really), but games can and should be. Anyone who feels otherwise isn't playing the same game as everyone else. And it's GGG's responsibility to do everything they can to make sure everyone's playing the same game. That is their most important duty as a game developer and operator. Most. Important.

GGG were not 'caught' giving streamers priority access on launch day, and that's important to remember too. They chose to do it openly, confident that most players are addicted enough and complacent enough that they'd either not care or forgive them when the inevitable heartfelt apology manifested later that day. I think this is, in fact, in some ways worse than being caught -- at least if they were caught, it'd imply they knew it was the wrong thing to do and tried to hide it. Instead they said fuck it, we're going to lose a 'big pile of money' if we don't do this, and that big pile of money meant more to them than their own integrity, than the basic rules of PoE itself as a fair, competitive game.

I'm profoundly disappointed how many Exiles are okay with this, and not only bought GGG's spun-to-hell explanation/apology but came up with their own. I mean, since when did being an Exile also mean being a sycophant and apologist for what was, by any account, putting the vast majority of Exiles second place to streamer money? Let me repeat three facts here:

1) GGG pull in ~50 million USD a year from customer purchases;

2) the paid streamer for whom they broke their own rules pulls in ~12 mil USD a year;

and

3) non-paid streamers were also granted priority access, including a handful who were later banned for cheating GGG's rules (a pity GGG won't ban themselves, eh? Glib, but Quis custodiet ipsos custodes, as the saying once went; 'Who watches the watchmen' might be more familiar)

So neither GGG nor the paid streamer would have been significantly damaged by the decision to maybe not break the rules and just wait the 'two hours' for the servers to stabilise -- I'm sure said paid streamer would have been fine playing something else for his horde for that duration. UNLESS the contract was not just '2 hours of play on launch day' but actually something like '2 hours of play AT launch', in which case, again, boy was that ever a promise GGG should have known they could never keep. As for point 3, that cleared any legal obligation and went straight into the realm of blatant favouritism. Shame on you, GGG. Shame.

I wonder what Chris means when he says 'big pile of money'. Was the 85mil or so he received for selling most of his shares in GGG to Tencent not a 'big pile of money'? Implicitly: was it not big enough a pile of money? Can you even trust someone that far beyond merely 'well-off the rest of their life' when they use a general term like 'big pile of money'?

What, would delaying the #ad stream a few hours have suddenly resulted in a huge drop-off in that $50mil they pull in from actual supporting Exiles? To me, when you say 'big pile of money', $50mil USD definitely qualifies. A pity that this underhanded move of theirs won't hold even a very small candle to THAT pile of money.

Gee, thanks Chris. Now you've got me sounding like the Joker from The Dark Knight. I do not, let me be clear, just want to watch the world burn. Although I suppose that would be a sort of fairness. Meh, nihilism is so infantile. No thanks. You know me better than that -- when I get a cause, I champion it to an absolutely unhealthy degree. You and your game was that cause, and you did quite well out of it. As did I: those early years were fun times. Intense, stressful, but ultimately fun. And when you told me you'd rather scuttle PoE than let it fall into the wrong hands, I believed you. I guess I never figured that the problem wasn't that the game would fall into the wrong hands, but that the hands cradling it would start to choke it at some point.

__

Is 'boycott' the wrong term? Somewhat. I think my main message is not so much a flat'don't give them money because they're immoral' as a 'if you're going to give them money, make sure it's for a selfish reason because they've revealed how selfish they are and how happily they'll break their own rules for big enough of a profit'. But let's face it: 'Boycott GGG' is a lot easier to say and repeat than 'don't support GGG for moral reasons because they're no longer a moral company and PoE is free to play or so they say so why not put that to the test but if you feel you're getting your value for mtx/support pack purchases go for it'.

This thread is just one big redirection of people's personal angst by expressing it through vague concepts such as morals and fairness while trying to excuse their past spendings as an act of charity while in reality that couldn't be further from the truth.

This thread can be made in any forum for any product.

It's funny to read the hysterics and essays of histrionics until you realize there are about 300 of these produced in a week, then it gets a bit awkward.

"

Kiss_Me_Quick wrote:

This thread is just one big redirection of people's personal angst by expressing it through vague concepts such as morals and fairness while trying to excuse their past spendings as an act of charity while in reality that couldn't be further from the truth.

This thread can be made in any forum for any product.

It's funny to read the hysterics and essays of histrionics until you realize there are about 300 of these produced in a week, then it gets a bit awkward.

Thanks for the bump, K.

"

TheIronBankofBraavos wrote:

Honestly, what more could you ask of GGG than that?

It's internet. People do know what should have been done, in every situations. After the situation occurred, of course, not before. It's not fun before. + It's impossible to react before, so let's shitpost after.

I couldn't give any crap about the "OMG A FEW STREAMERS IN A 100K+ QUEUE HAD RIGHTS TO ENTER A GAME AND GET DISCONNECTED, THE WORLD IS DEAD APOCALYPSE NOW GG NO RE", whining at this non-event is childish overreacting, what bothers me a lot is i do not like at all the current league mechanic (craptimatum) and the general orientation the game is following. I'm allready burning out of the league, to me it's unrewarding, poor and restrictive meta, tedious, and my right wrist yells at me every second, begging me to come back to Last Epoch.

Problem is Last Epoch might have wonderful QoL features, but it's also an empty shell for now, so... Eating my bowl of crap on PoE, and waiting for something else.

"

Foreverhappychan wrote:

Thanks for the bump, K.

You personally wouldn't have spent 10K on PoE if you didn't get the attention and perks for donating - nothing to do with morals and altruism.
There wouldn't have been a donation if you would have been forced to stay anonymous to the players and GGG with getting nothing in return.

You're still here because irrelevant of your morals, you get attention( which is fine, everyone wants attention) although you haven't played for probably half a decade now and delete your users twice a year.

And you will still keep coming because you still get attention (:
Even though by contributing to the forum, you contribute to the unethical immoral horrible company's profits through providing content for it's paying customers.

And everyone else in this thread will keep donating because they like shiny armour, which is fine and has always been the reason, not pure charitable altruism.

Man this guy assumes alot of shit and he dares to use the word awkward when he recently made several threads with cringe/garbage..

The point has been made already it's up to people to use their brains now.

People will say it's "overreacting" or it's "crying" but this is the generation we're living in today.. anything that's not a yes man opinion it will be considered whining and crying.

"

Kiss_Me_Quick wrote:

...donating because they like shiny armour... not pure charitable altruism.

You certainly do not speak for me. You're projecting your motivation for buying stuff onto everybody else. That is nonsense. What do you hope to achieve with that?

Serious question: You accuse some of us of lying about our intentions. How does this benefit you? Or is there really no space in your mind for altruism?
Then you'd be as bad as all the economic "experts" who completely ignore all social aspects of human interactions and believe us all to be purely self-centered robots with financial considerations topmost in our minds at every moment of every day? They are idiots, blinded by the other idiots in their specific bubble.
And you?

"

Kiss_Me_Quick wrote:

...

Don't be a playa hater (: