Comment by Cypher@lemmy.world on Cities: Skylines 2 developers have noticed 'a growing tendency of toxicity in our community'

Developers of Cities: Skylines 2 have noticed a growing toxicity in their community, which is affecting engagement and creativity.
The CEO of Colossal Order expressed concern about the negative impact of toxicity on the team and the community.
The developers still encourage helpful criticism from the community but ask for it to be constructive and kind.

People don’t tend to be polite when they buy a dodgy product of any kind, why would video games be different?

Professional sports leagues are another example. Put a shit product on the field, you’re going to get shit back from the fans. Every now and then a young star player comes up (especially in American football) that received adulation for years at the college level and suddenly gets faced with jeers. They react like Colossal Order does here and–eventually–learn that they are picking a fight against collective emotional response that they are never going to win.

CO is learning that lesson now. While they can and should take actions against those that cross the line (death threats, etc.), there’s not much in the way of effective corrective action here. It’s all on them. They can a) put out a better product, b) hire community managers with thicker skin that can better assuage their fans, or c) withdraw from community interaction. Most that can’t handle it pick the third option.

There’s no reason to treat the developers like shit though.

Gamers don’t need to act like entitled bitches about everything. Especially when they continue to play the game. Provide feedback, leave a review, and move on. There’s no excuse for rudeness.

Can you tell me a single industry where you treat customers like shit and not get abuse in return?

People are acting like angry reviews are somehow unwarranted when customers are being sold defective products.

What about a single other industry where people make 8 hour long essays shitting on one specific person and get hundreds of thousands of views?

You’re not familiar with the car and motorcycle industries are you?

People spend years tearing into companies over vehicles, spending hundreds or thousands of hours meticulously detailing every engineering problem, real or imagined, and shitting on anyone who disagrees.

The only difference is that car and motorcycle companies generally shield their employees from criticism to a much greater degree.

You don’t usually see the engineers names in a credit screen in your car. Those engineers aren’t generally seen shit posting on twitter about how entitled the customers are because that would get them sacked.

No, didn’t know about that.

I don’t think another industry having the same problem makes this one more palatable though.

You kinda have to think that though. You tried to argue that no other industry has the same problem, therefore this is unforgivable. So by following your own logic, it seems like because others do it as well it means it’s not unforgivable, it’s just the standard response. Very much a normal reaction to being fed shit by yet another corpo that expects you to compliment the taste.

Is there a word for an argument that tries to justify their side by saying “it happens in this other place, so it should be okay here, too”, because that’s what that sounds like to me.

You can be constructive without being a dick, full stop. No justification from it happening elsewhere will actually justify that. Being a dick is not justifiable. Feeling upset and angry absolutely is, and you can express that, again, without being a dick.

Show me people being dicks about it, I’ve looked and haven’t seen it.

I’ll tell you a dick move I have seen though… Ive seen a developer lie about features and deliver a broken mess for full price.

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