3 ms·
Their statements don't make a good case for them doing more than following the money, and part of the reason for the outrage. The outrage is itself a move playe
by philipov 8y ago
Their statements don't make a good case for them doing more than following the money, and part of the reason for the outrage. The outrage is itself a move played to signal this. People talk about how capitalism is driven by signals from the demand side, and this kind of outrage is integral to forming boycott factions large enough to oppose the advertising and noise produced by the marketing-industrial complex.
As corporations become ever larger, it becomes harder to make demand-side opinions observable, and so it becomes necessary to employ more extreme forms of protest to avoid being overpowered by the sell-side attempts at influence. If that influence is not opposed, the market will become entirely dominated by the sell-side and will allow trust-like abuse of power, destroying the equilibrium pressure by which markets are allegedly regulated. This kind of market abuse does not require monopolies, and appears to be a blind spot for many proponents of market economies.
This is not just a problem with gaming, and one could reasonably argue that there are more important battles to fight. That said, this is probably one of the few markets where that kind of demand-side mobilization is still possible, as many others have already been neutralized by divide-and-conquer tactics.