- 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.
Archive link: https://archive.ph/mVaIY
The comments in here are really disappointing and a reflection of where this community has gone in general.
Excusing toxic gamer communities, accusing the developer of things for pointing it out? All because the game not in a good state is toxic in itself and really not what this community should be.
This place gets worse every week.
Sorry, I’m having trouble understanding what kind of commentary you were expecting.
Leading up to release as soon as the first reviews pointed out bad performance (see thread), many on Lemmy were bashing CO/Paradox for putting out a beta-stage product as if it was fully released, and Lemmings and people at large were never real fans of being unpaid QA testers for game companies.
Mind you, I love this game, and there’s a lot in there that I can tell CO devs put their heart and soul in. But I see a comment or a post every now and then saying “Lemmy is becoming so toxic, like Reddit” [1] [2] [3] [4] and I’m trying to figure out what exactly has changed, if you can help me out here.
None of that excuses being toxic around the game though.
At most, it excuses just refunding it. And then never interacting with it or the community around it ever again.
I absolutely agree. There’s a line between constructive criticism/feedback and toxicity, some cases are obvious but others I don’t know where exactly to draw it. Those that aren’t interested in the game after being let down may be best advised to refund and move on with their life.
Unfortunately, I don’t know where to strike a good balance to avoid both an "echo chamber where any dissent is extinguished’, and a ‘cesspool of toxic jerks talking ironically’.
Eh, for game-released-in-a-disappointing state there’s always two points for me:
It’s okay to hold a company responsible for the sale of a poor product. You don’t have to give them a free pass and just go away.
You can let them know what they did wrong, and if they’re smart, they won’t do the same wrong thing again, the next time they sell their next product.
And any human being on the planet, when they are not listened to, will become upset and rude. The point is for any company to strive for the win-win, and listen to their customers, and not just try to sell them the next bad product and repeat the same bad cycle.
For sure. I might have weasel-worded my comment with “may be best advised” as it’s not all cases.
Toxicity is unhealthy, but I am optimistic it will become less so once CO and Paradox follow through on their promises. The two big ones being 1. actually being able to play the game on consoles and modest hardware and 2. mods
For some reason people seem to experience the most rage, vocalization frustration, etc. when it comes to having their entertainment fucked with (whether pricing, content itself, etc). Companies can cause global recession or market crashes, be responsible for child labor resulting in death and dismemberment, or engage in flat out fraud, but those companies will never bring out the toxicity, death threats, entitlement, and communal anger like a video game or film/tv company that impacts the entertainment of the masses. When people used to think of the most evil company in America back in the early 2010’s, EA was more hated than Bank of America, Wells Fargo, or AIG. That never made sense to me.
You should never fuck around with the plebs and their ‘bread and circuses’, especially if your government is not doing well.
People are pissed off at inflation, the general cost of everything (including AAA games), laws and punishments not being applied evenly/fairly, etc., these days.
I think the latter part of your comment is a bit hyperbolic (especially part of your comment that I edited out when quoting it in my response).
The defunct Consumerist used to run a poll. https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2013/04/09/ea-voted-worst-company-in-america-again/?sh=2dc357397aeb . It was always strange how EA beat out the companies that I think do more harm to society for several years. For some reason it’s entertainment companies that draw a lot of vocal ire from consumers, despite financial institutions, pharma, telecoms, oil, factory farms, etc. doing more explicit and literal harm.
Just repeating myself at this point, but to answer (again) your question…
Toxic” is different to everyone though. That’s why these comment sections always go in circles. To some people saying “paradox are crooks and they have no respect for us and they’re ripping us off by using us as beta testers,” is toxic to some. And to others it is seen as constructive criticism. So when someone says “this community is toxic”. I don’t really know what they’re saying. “Toxic” has just become a lazy buzz word that makes discussing this kind of thing pointless.
For me it’s the over representation of self described communists that take over every thread to poetically or unpoetically just keep saying capitalism=bad and then do shit like justify bad behavior because capitalism=bad or pretend to care about making sure employees get paid while advocating for piracy of everything being justified.
So a difference of political opinion = toxic? Got it.
I have no problem discussing political opinions. I hate how every thread gets co opted by un critical hot takes for the circle jerk of up votes. It’s frustrating that any post about digital media has the top comments all saying “Yarrrr, time to sail the high sees.” Or anytime there’s any news about a corporation, the top comment seems to be “fuck capitalism and those greedy greedy share holders.” Those kinds of comments aren’t critical, aren’t contributing to any meaningful conversation. On reddit I think it succeeded when you had communities of enthusiasts having conversations about the thing they are enthusiastic about. Lemmy seems to have a lot more people enthusiastic about a political position just try to spread that on any and all communities.
I’m expecting this community not to say that a company deserves a toxic community and that being toxic is a totally normal and expected thing.
A few months ago, even , this was a place where people would talk about the game news and not revel in your average Gamer toxicity.
Now it’s just, I guess, reddit, but worse because the toxic voices are louder in a smaller echo chamber. The people who don’t ascribe to this kind of thing leave. The toxic people are all that is left.
Yeah I noticed that, too. All of Lemmy in fact. It feels like engagement is up, but only in select echo chambers of being angry about something.
I understand your point, and agree that you have received negative replies that prove this community accepts a level of toxicity that may not have been there before. (To me it feels like the same level, but perhaps I’ve just ignored it or become numb to it)
I encourage people to engage in these topics with a level head but there will be exceptions at times.
https://eev.ee/blog/2016/07/22/on-a-technicality/
Reading the second half of this comments reminded me of this long read I was introduced to over in Beehaw.org (the evaporative cooling section). Left unchecked, only the jerks will be left and the nice people give up and leave. If a slower, nicer place for discussion is what you’re looking for, Beehaw was where I found that vibe the most.
It’s becoming Reddit. Which is what we wanted last year? I know what you mean though. There is a difference between now and then with our community. Probably related to user count?
I’ve played CS2 for weeks. Days of hours. Have completely enjoyed it.
It’s not finished and they’re honest about that. Also, comparisons to CS in it’s finished state (easy to do unconsciously) overlook just how many DLCs it took to get to full maturity.
I enjoy the game and have no regrets for buying. I don’t feel deceived since I could have asked for as refund.
I think some of this is a specific kind of FOMO. Fear of missing out (on what could have been). I’m hoping they do enough to fix the parenthetical.
Edit to add: my computer has great specs for late 2020. It’s not top of the line, but it has everything I thought it would need, CPU, RAM, GPU. That may impact my experience.
The game was unplayable on my 5 year old laptop. But it’s not really a gaming rig anyhow…
Regarding specs:
Even youtube creators supposedly had trouble (at times) running it at a consistent framerate.
Not that I had it when I bought it…It ran fine at 1440p ultra wide and (afaik) medium/high settings.
Agree.
One of the main videos I know.
Edit: fixed link.
Counter strike 2
Its the internet though. I don’t know of a place on the internet where there’s no toxicity.
Toxic devs get a toxic community. Why should I express sympathy for them experiencing consequences?
Yes, this is the kind of comment I am talking about when I am talking about how this community had gone downhill massively. Thank you for the example.
It is not hard to say that the game isn’t in a good state, but that is no excuse for toxicity. Unless you yourself are a part of the problem.
Is a publisher who’s failed to live up to the promise of a good game entitled to a good community? The fact they have any at all is a blessing.
Just to clarify: if you make a bad product, people are allowed to abuse you?
Your company? 100%. Absolutely. I implore people to abuse all companies, even.
Thats not what I said. But I suppose you knew that.
Sorry but I did specify publishers and companies multiple times. I’ve never once even alluded to personal harassment as I obviously don’t believe in that. I however do think that this game deserves the toxicity it sees and the company deserves to be harassed for not delivering on their promise of a worthwhile product for which many people paid nearly $70 (CAD).
So erm… who is this “company” that reads the comments on the forum, again?
As in, what’s their account name? Should be easy enough to direct the harassment at them instead of a dev or a social engagement rep or a support rep then, after all.
This video was released 3 days before the game released. In response to Colossal Order (game creator) being transparent about issues they were seeing.
The video I linked is a known and well regarded YouTube contributor with a significant following. He, himself, was transparent in his testing and results also.
All of this was out there before the game was released and refunds were available.
How were the devs behaving toxic? I mean, should be easy enough to provide quotes, right?
Remember when they launched the game in a shit state and charged full price for it, then failed to communicate? Actions speak louder than words, and those are some pretty toxic actions.
That’s not toxic, though. I get that those actions are annoying and really poor, but they’re not… toxic. As in, they aren’t done with the intention of poisoning the relationship, in fact quite the opposite, they’re meant to exploit it to take money out of it. Hence “exploitative” might be a much better term to use.
But importantly, being exploited is no reason to be toxic to workers who don’t make the decisions in return. Especially not in a situation where there are ample ways to go about just undoing the damage done to you, namely refunding the game then putting the company on ignore on whatever stores you frequent.
I repeat, for the last time, I’ve never advocated for toxicity or harassment to workers. Only to the companies they represent. Please, if you’re going to argue with me, argue based on what I say, not what you decide I mean.
Are these not your words? I get that you aren’t advocating toxicity to workers, but you are defending it.
Devs clearly refers to the company that develops the game. Try again.
The fact that you’re harping on this point is because you know I don’t agree with personal harassment. You are aware that I don’t agree with people being abusive about specific people who work for the company. You’re making bad faith arguments to try to prove “You were saying this”, which I was not, and if I was, is clearly not what I intended. Move on.
You were repeatedly stating things not supported by facts or events. And how I read your dev statement was completely reasonable.
I think that’s where many people got that impression.
I’m not really the person who needs to know when to quit.
Argue based on what you said, and not some invented/imaginary version of what you said?
This is the internet, sir. Such factual discourse is greatly frowned upon! /s
Failure to communicate.
They’ve had regular updates to their blog since before and well after the release. It’s a recent blog post that led to people hoping the toxicity could chill a little.
So far I’m seeing implications but haven’t been able to find facts to support. Where are you seeing dishonesty or shadiness?
The comments in here are really disappointing and a reflection of what this community has become, corporate bootlickers.
Excusing companies scamming customers because gamers dared to point out the scam? All because the companies quarterly profits weren’t up enough, is a really toxic state and not what this community should be.
lol.
There was no scam. They were upfront about the issues before release.
Stating facts is not bootlicking. It’s just being a mature, fair adult about things.
Can you link any prerelease announcements that include the bugs and performance issues?
This vid covers an assortment of the issues, where things stood, and reaction to the news.
Respected YouTuber does the research. .
That was days before the release and in response to an announcement weeks prior.
Slowly becoming the reddit replacement we don’t deserve.