A community that helps people stay up to date with things going on.
For anyone who didn't know, Thor's (the guy himself who is behind PirateSoftware) claim to fame is that his dad worked at Blizzard.
His dad is also the real world inspiration behind the South Park WoW guy:
To quote Thor
"No that character wasn't inspired by my dad. That is my dad. Like that's his apartment."
South Park WoW guy got laid at least once. I guess there's hope for everyone.
Saw people talking in comments at several places now, expressing animosity towards them to say the least, always presented as something that everyone seems to know about.
tl;dr It's YouTuber drama. Consider yourself lucky you're not so terminally online that you understand it.
Piratesoftware is a Twitch steamer/YouTuber who speaks his mind quite bluntly and doesn't back down after doing so. Because of that, he's often involved in streamer drama and has a lot of people who dislike him. Haters love to reference these past dramas whenever his name is brought up.
10 months ago, he was involved in drama when he was asked his opinion on the Stop Killing Games EU citizens initiative. His opinion was that he didnt like it and expressed himself in a crass and crude way as he normally does. Supporters of the initiative didn't like that and it spawned a lot of back and forth arguments before dying down.
Currently, the citizens initiative is short on having the required signatures to move forward and the deadline is in a few weeks. The lead guy behind the movement put out a video saying the initiative will likely fail, he will be ending his organization efforts when it does, and blamed it on Piratesoftware's video from 10 months ago. That has restarted the drama.
Many people have a misunderstanding of what the Stop Killing Games movement is about. It's about trying to get governments to pass a law that requires game developers to have a plan in place for when they shut down the servers of online games. In the current gaming landscape, games can be taken offline at any moment for any reason. And when that happens, you're shit out of luck. The Stop Killing Games movement believes that if/when this happens, the publisher needs to have a plan in place to ensure that those games can continue to be played. This can take on many forms: modifying the game to not require an online connection, or releasing the server binaries so that players can host their own custom servers, or something of that nature. Worst comes worst, if none of this is possible, then the movement demands that it's made clear in the game's advertisement that you could lose game functionality when the servers shut down. Essentially, the laws surrounding game licenses are vague, and the movement wants a clarification on what buyers are entitled to when they buy a game.
The primary reason why many people have a misunderstanding of the movement is because a large YouTuber named PirateSoftware made 2 videos where he outright lied about what the movement was about and trashed it. He also made multiple statements on his streams where he purportedly "disproved" the movement, where he continued to lie about the movement and trashed it. His videos and statements were the most commonly viewed coverage on the movement, and this disinformation supposedly severely hampered the momentum of the movement, such that even now, many people still believe that the movement is about forcing publishers to keep their servers online indefinitely (it's not).
PirateSoftware was a former developer at Blizzard and was making an online game at the time, so some people speculate that the reason he lied about the movement was because he had a vested interest in keeping the current vagueness of the laws. As more and more people attempted to call him out on his disinformation, he doubled down and refused to admit that he gave any sort of incorrect information, even when the information is provably incorrect.
Apparently, PirateSoftware has a history of this sort of behavior and has gotten himself into some previous scandals due to his seeming inability to admit that he was wrong at all. This has led otherwise minor, forgettable mistakes to balloon into giant controversies.
Taken together with this recent controversy with Stop Killing Games, his reputation has taken a significant nosedive and many people now believe that he's a narcissist who is willing to take down the movement for the sole purpose that he wants to be seen as the smartest guy in the room.
What did you really expect him to do, dude? He had no mana. What was he supposed to do?
*casts spell on the boss that the boss is immune to
Runs away
I have no mana
*casts a shield spell that helps nobody, not even himself, because he ran away"
People with planet-sized egos really need to stick to DPS roles.
He even had like 3 different items that could provide mana to him but he roached
Thank you for the answer! I just came back home to all the answers, yours strikes me as the best summary of the situation. I had signed the petition myself a while ago, but after that, never looked into further coverage, so all this whizzed right past me. Seems like, no matter if he genuinely misunderstood it or maliciously misrepresented it - he handled the situation pretty horribly overall. Explains the hate I have been seeing.
The Stop Killing games campaign is an EU petition to prevent game developers from making games that people bought unplayable, for example by turning off the servers of always-online games.
Pirate Software is a youtuber and game developer who made several videos criticizing the campaign. He thinks it's unreasonable to expect game developers to do this and also asserts that people who purchase games don't own them. His videos supposedly had a measurable negative impact on the petition, which at this point looks like it might fail. Combined with the fact that he often acted quite rude and arrogant towards supporters of the campaign, he is now quite unpopular among them.
Beyond rude and arrogant IMO. He misunderstood and misrepresented the SKG campaign and, when called out on this, refused to engage or discuss it further.
and also asserts that people who purchase games don't own them
Isn't that a large part of what the petition is aiming for though?
To be more clear, PirateSoftware thinks the status quo of only owning a license for a game, which can be revoked at any time, is a good thing that should be kept.
Stop Killing Games would give consumers more rights, which would bring the purchase of a digital game license closer to actual ownership.
PirateSoftware thinks the status quo of only owning a license for a game, which can be revoked at any time, is a good thing that should be kept.
What kind of head injury does one need to sustain to come up with that conclusion
The combination of 'industry plant' and 'blizzard nepobaby' are consistent accusations since his videos
The idea from pirate software is that they shouldn't and that's the better scenario.
Corporate propagandists have infiltrated so much of the discourse it's almost impossible to make any positive change. Eat the rich.
Dunno who you're referring to but the Stop Killing Games petition was started when Ubisoft announced that gamers would no longer be able to play The Crew, despite having bought it.
It's not new that online functionality is turned off after the player base dies down, but to be completely unable to play a game that can be played offline is crazy.
So now there's a petition circulating, but it's nearing its end. There are only a couple of days left I think.
It's a petition for the EU (or maybe Europe or the EER, I'm not sure), and every country needs a certain amount of signatures. I think some Mediterranean island nations are still lagging, but most countries have plenty now.
If you're in Europe, find the petition and sign it. Especially if you live in Malta or Cyprus.
Especially if you live in Malta or Cyprus.
That doesn't matter at this point. The country threshold has been reached. Now it "only" needs to reach 1 million total signatures before the end of july, currently sitting at around 600k.