'No gay, no pay': The RuneScape community is absolutely mauling Jagex's new CEO over his decision to cancel new Pride Month events
'No gay, no pay': The RuneScape community is absolutely mauling Jagex's new CEO over his decision to cancel new Pride Month events
Jon Bellamy claimed the choice to dramatically curtail pride was to prevent backlash. That's caused an even bigger backlash.
Cancelling a pre-loaded pride event because you're scared of right wing nutcases being mean to your playerbase is the very definition of letting the terrorists win.
Wow, the way he phrased his reasoning is so undoubtedly cowardly too. He didn't even try to hide the fact that it's performative as fuck lol.
Another instance of Jagex being fucked. The cycle continues.
Please please please email support.
The mod team is not happy about this either, and was responsive to me. Enough voices can change things.
If you haven’t play RuneScape - this has been a popular event for years. It’s always high quality fun. There have been stupid Fally protests and chuds but the events have always been really delightful.
Nice use of "gormless" 👏
Canceled Pride? Well, I canceled my sub!
Pride month celebrations were my go-to events in secret. My family doesn't really understand the niche appeal of the game, and state religious agents can't really "disguise themselves" ingame. But if Jagex is veering right, they might (like twitter) sell my information to security agencies the same way the Sauds/Turks did to Twitter a few years ago.
At least I get to wear my pride cape 24/7 until my membership runs out. In hindsight, It was a bad idea to assume that shooting stars/maple forestry/w301 hate chats were "isolated incidents". They're clearly part of an ongoing trend that has the CEO's approval. Oh well, there's always a countdown to good things. I should enjoy it while it lasts.
Not everything has to be shit at all times. We could make a world where good things are, like, normal.
consider private servers. idk if they're less reactionary though because I haven't tried them
There is a player run unofficial pride house party happening on the 21st
CEO seems like an idiot and/or coward.
Scumbag CEO.
Get his ass.
rs has been declining quite a while, especially since they have significant periods of content droughts. getting gutted by PE firms isnt helping it.
The player base has been steadily increasing for years on the old school side whereas the RS3 has been slowly dying.
https://www.misplaceditems.com/rs_tools/graph/?display=avg&interval=week&total=1
I am curious how much of their revenue is propped up by whales on the RS3 side
And I was just about to resub after stopping in January to catch up on my game backlog.
Back to the backlog I go!
Hell yeah
I'm pretty sure this happened because sooo many players complained about the event the last times. I remember boycotts and stuff.
I'm not saying Jagex isn't bad, but this time it's on players.
If I ran a business, I wouldn’t engage in any political events whatsoever. I don’t think businesses should, quite frankly. Be politically neutral. I don’t believe doing so “supports the status quo,” and thereby oppresses people “de facto,” that’s just pressure from activists to support them. You support gay people on your service by letting them play and putting down any instances of anti-gay rhetoric on your platform. Simple as that.
Calling pride month a political event is one of the most wildly bigoted takes I've ever heard.
No, it's definitely political. So was the Civil Rights movement in the US. So was Womens' suffrage.
Pushing for change is political, even if it's nearly universally agreed that the particular change is necessary and good. I agree with LGBT rights and as far as I care, they can have a month long pride if they want, it doesn't in any way chafe my willy. However, I agree with the person you replied to. As a business, ANY stance on ANY political cause risks alienation of some part of your customer base. Doing a 180 on your stance like Jagex did is of course the worst thing you can do, because then you alienate the people who agreed with you, but the others will still remember when you disagreed with them. Once they decided to do pride, they should've fucking stuck to it, at least for the year where they already had events scheduled!
If I ran a public-facing business at all, it would have literally no political allegiance or opinions. No stance on LGBT rights, no political donations (not really a huge thing in my country anyway), etc. Just do my thing, provide a great service, make sure my employees and customers are happy, and... The LGBT folks can do whatever they want, I'm just not voicing support for them as a business. Even if I as a person root for equal rights, I just don't want to take a stance as a business owner. Donations to charities, including LGBT charities, are fine - I just don't want it to be particularly public. But then I just prefer privacy in these kinds of matters.
The fact that business engage in Christmas celebrations instead of, say, Ramadan, is itself a political decision - it places value on Christmas over the celebrations of other religions.
I'm not saying there shouldn't be Christmas events in games - quite contrary, I think having as many events from as many cultures would be a smart business decision and it would make a larger number of players happy. But the fact is it would be a double standard to be fine with that and not with Pride.
Pride is political now?
🤡
Always has been
Yes
Do you also support gay people on your service by letting them organize and run a gay pride event on your service? Or is having to witness people celebrating gay pride too much for your delicate sensibilities?
Not the person you replied to, but agree with them to some degree, at least on the fact that any strong political stances are dangerous for a business.
If I ran a service and gay people are celebrating pride on it, that's none of my business and they can keep on doing whatever they want. Similarly, if conservatives want to throw a straight party without outright saying gay people deserve fewer rights, it's fucking weird, but it's their business. The moment anyone advocates for harming someone else, THAT's when it becomes a problem for me. Goal of a business, in my opinion, is to serve as many people as possible.
I just wouldn't want to voice support for, or against, anyone's rights, as a business. It's horrible that LGBT rights are a politicized issue, sure. But if I ran a business, and there are 30% otherwise quite well-behaved customers who would drop my business because I changed my logo to a rainbow colored one... I just don't see myself doing that. If I'm providing a service at the best price/quality ratio, it would just mean they drop me to go pay a homophobic business owner even more money for the same service. Does that actually benefit anyone, other than the hypothetical homophobic business owner?
But the worst, most cowardly thing, is supporting LGBT rights and then WITHDRAWING that support. If you're political already, fucking stick to your beliefs. Don't abandon them the second the political landscape starts changing.
If I ran a business, I wouldn’t engage in any political events whatsoever.
So you won't have holidays, period.
Game companies need to focus on making good games. Take "pride" in that.
For an mmo game that was released 2 decades ago and has a large established userbase, the main thing left to do to continue being a good game is organising events for continued engagement.
This would not have taken anything from the other teams. The assets already exist.
those who play games, and those who are LGBTQIA+ are both people
They should but Lemmy don't like that.
In the year of our Lord 2025 "news" is some goober cherry picking reddit and twitter posts to push his opinion.