Following his trial for defamation of the families of the children and school staff killed in the Sandy Hook massacre, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones is using Valve Corp.’s Steam, the world’s largest digital distribution platform for PC games, to sell an Infowars-themed video game. Jones claims to have earned hundreds of thousands in revenue from the video game, yet he has refused to pay the Sandy Hook families. Alex Jones: NWO Wars also mirrors and cartoonishly repackages the conspiracy theorist’s regularly violent, hateful rhetoric despite the platform’s policies against hate speech.
Can’t they just garnish his shit and empty his bank accounts?
They will, but he threw up roadblocks that the court has to move through. He moved his money behind dummy corporations that the court has to investigate first before they can “pierce the corporate veil,” for example.
I’ll stick to playing Broforce
Piracy and possible donating to the game studio is the morally correct choice.
So here’s the problem with piracy as a protest… It doesn’t cost the publisher anything. Which has always been kind of the point of piracy.
Unfortunately when you pirate this game you receive an item of negative value, so I would recommend just staying away from the whole thing.
Anyone know if it would it be worth reporting this as Defamatory on Steam? There are options for Legal Violation, Harmful, Fraud, Defamatory…without having played it it’s hard to throw it in any of those specific categories, because they mostly have to do with the software itself, though Defamation might work since I’d be surprised if the content doesn’t contain defamatory statements (even if they’re wrapped in attempted irony for legal wiggle room).
Jesus you and everyone who commented on this comment is dumb fuck I hate the dude too and he should pay his debts but my god dude how is it anymore harmful than like a million other games that exist? Pirate the shit. But reporting it for child exploitation like that one dude said because it showed Epstein Island is moronic as fuck its a game about conspiracy theories and it isnt any more harmful or defaming than a million other games that exist right now on steam. It doesnt show children being exploited. One thing I notice on Lemmy a lot is people who are like “well I dont like this so other people shouldnt get to like it either.” Fucking christ just pirate the damn game so you dont give him money or dont play it if the courts dont get bought off then their should be no problem with them seizing the money he made off the game. But to report it for child exploitation and defamation is mega fucking stupid my god
Jesus you and everyone who commented on this comment is dumb fuck
You said, in your comment to my comment…
Look: you’re putting so many words in my mouth, it’s probably not worth replying, so…
You’re reporting a game youve never even played for made up reasons because you dont like the guy who made it. I read your comment and didnt put any words in your mouth
I flagged it as harmful because it isn’t directly related to the defamation case. But I’m sure either gets your point across, and if Valve gets enough complaints maybe they’ll actually realize they don’t need a man criminally liable for misusing media, to benefit spreading media on their platform.
I flagged it as Child Exploitation for the simple fact one of the screenshots says Epstein Island…
Dont forget to report Google too they have the gall to host this on their servers!1!1 man I bet if any realtor tries to list it for sale we can get them too!! We should never see anything about it existing ever again so people forget about it! /S if it isnt painfully obvious.
Please do explain how showing a picture of Epstein Island is child exploitation. I would love to have that make sense. If there was a daycare that hurt children and I had a picture of the outside of the daycare how in the fuck is that Child exploitation? Its a game about conspiracy theories and political events. That dude who ran that island mysteriously died with no cameras on him and some new guards that were asleep. A lot of people know he did not kill himself so that being unprovable makes it a conspiracy theory which is no surprise it would make it to a game about conspiracy theories. Fuck Alex Jones but also fuck a bunch of dumbasses wasting Valves time and reasources reporting shit that isnt happening. God you people are STUPID I dont understand how people can be so out of touch with the reality around them. Also harmful reportings? Go take a look at the top games on steam especially the Hentai ones where the thousand year old characters look like children THATS child exploitation but showing a picture of espstein island is not child exploitation. You can google pictures of Epstein Island right now, pages upon pages should I report Google for child exploitation? Common sense is dead
I do find it weird that Steam actually had this as a game pushed to me. Not sure if that was targeted due to other game choices I’ve made, but I saw the ad and laughed and shook my head.
I get pushed conservative bullshit all the time in ads, but almost never on steam. Part of it is that I’ve intentionally limited the spread of my personal information and also given out more false information than real, so Google isn’t sure if I’m an 84 year old woman in Montana or a 23 year old man using a VPN from Wales. They end up just pushing targeted ads for those vague locations.
EDIT: Pro Tip, if a signup asks for an address for any reason other than shipping/billing then you can just enter a random church address and it usually works.
I think there are some plugins that will autofill things like that? Not sure what the current best one is.
I usually just put 123 Main Street, Schenectady, NY 12345. Most places don’t even check to see if it’s a real address.
Alex Jones got to his position by gaming the advertisement system for self-promotion. I can’t say I’m shocked to see his video game once again exploiting the Steam store’s algorithm, just like he’d gamed the YouTube and Twitter algorithms before.
You’ll see Ann Coulter do the same thing with book sales. Have someone straw-purchase 10,000 copies of “Smelly: The Liberal Campaign To Fart A Lot And How It Is Destroying America”, and rocket to the top of the Best Seller Lists.
Don’t under estimate how many conspiracy theorists and conservatives are on Steam. A good portion of my friends list is fractured after 2016 and 2020
I think Regnery Press does that last bit all the time…I don’t know if people that maintain such lists take that kind of thing into account or not. And yeah, I have no trouble believing that Lil Alex found some demon willing to help him game the Steam system.
At one time the NY Times bestseller list put this dagger (†) icon at the end of the summary when it happened. That way people in the know would get it was because of bulk sales.
But I think NYT changed how they do their best seller list to be a survey of booksellers, and probably just don’t include bulk sales at all anymore. But I don’t know. But if you see a dagger on a bestseller list, it means shenanigans are afoot. (†)
I don’t know if people that maintain such lists take that kind of thing into account or not
It takes more work to find out who is purchasing the books, particularly if the publisher includes straw-purchases as part of its marketing strategy and therefore has an incentive to report their number inaccurately.
I have no trouble believing that Lil Alex found some demon willing to help him game the Steam system.
He’s got enough money to simply do it himself (or outsource the process to professionals). Sort of a priming-the-pump method to marketing. Its very possible that the vig Steam gets from your straw purchases is less than the cost of paying them upfront to advertise your game. Also possible he’s doing both, in which case Steam has a strong economic incentive not to discourage this behavior.
