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 Gert wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

Exhibit A:

 Gert wrote:

Said community also sent death threats to someone to who GW offered a job so let's not pretend they're the good guys here.

Death threats are raised in order to villify the entire community.

Actually, it was raised because people were going back down the "GW is evil because they got rid of fan content" road and people should be reminded what fans did in response. People on Dakka especially have a hard time actually staying to the truth on this particular issue and either make up fake grievances i.e. "GW canceled TTS" or brush the bad actions of the community under the carpet because it doesn't suit their narrative.

The logic is the same. "I don't have to listen to any voices from a group because of a few extremists." You paint with a broad brush.

 Insectum7 wrote:
The logic is the same. "I don't have to listen to any voices from a group because of a few extremists." You paint with a broad brush.

The harassment aimed at SODAZ was enough to make them quit interacting with 40k entirely and less than a year on we've got people on this website choosing to look the other way, pretend it wasn't a big deal, and even say death threats are good. I'd argue I'm painting just fine.

 Sim-Life wrote:

 Gert wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:
Well you see it's not my first day on the internet.

Matt Ward got death threats and GW changed the way designers were credited. Death threats should always be treated as actionable. But hey, I'm sure the guy who got the threats is doing great and hasn't lost all love for 40k and lost out on a job.

Actually I'm sure he put on his big boy pants, ignored it like any sensible person and got on with his life. If I crumpled up into a ball and wept uncontrollably every time someone told me to kill myself in a game lobby or online I'd never get anything done.

Also they changed the way they credited designers because people were giving Cruddace gak for his tyranid codexes. The 7th Ed Nid codex was the first "GW Design Team" book for a reason. Reason being it was gak and everyone knew Cruddace wrote it, but they had deniability until they said in WD that he'd written it because GW are inept.

Yeah, there's was way more criticism rather than actual death threats. Otherwise we'd have heard the same exact thing with Cruddace getting death threats.

 Sim-Life wrote:

 Gert wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:
Well you see it's not my first day on the internet.

Matt Ward got death threats and GW changed the way designers were credited. Death threats should always be treated as actionable. But hey, I'm sure the guy who got the threats is doing great and hasn't lost all love for 40k and lost out on a job.

Actually I'm sure he put on his big boy pants, ignored it like any sensible person and got on with his life. If I crumpled up into a ball and wept uncontrollably every time someone told me to kill myself in a game lobby or online I'd never get anything done.

Also they changed the way they credited designers because people were giving Cruddace gak for his tyranid codexes. The 7th Ed Nid codex was the first "GW Design Team" book for a reason. Reason being it was gak and everyone knew Cruddace wrote it, but they had deniability until they said in WD that he'd written it because GW are inept.

Ward got death threats over a bunch of stuff in 5th, Gav Thorpe got death threats over the 4th ed CSM book and we've seen the devs have their names dragged through the mud for less than popular codexes.

I think it ought to be understood that death threats are basically rampant, especially in the lazy anonymity of the internet age. Any figure of "reasonable public stature" should kind of expect them as part of the territory. That's not to say they're good or anything, they're just part of doing business at some point. It sucks, but it just is.

If I ever get one I'll frame it. It means I've arrived, lol.

It's also a wonderful distraction to the actual topic, and allows certain people to steer us clear away from any criticism (or even analysis) of GW because of vague and meaningless death threats (which are to the Internet what saying "Hello" is in real life) sent years ago.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
It's also a wonderful distraction to the actual topic, and allows certain people to steer us clear away from any criticism (or even analysis) of GW because of vague and meaningless death threats (which are to the Internet what saying "Hello" is in real life) sent years ago.

I wasn't trying to close a lid on anything, just point out that it wasn't a single instance, but a pattern of instances that seem to have made the studio team, their management or perhaps someone higher up in the company (if not all the above) decide to pull their names off the books.

That aside, something I've felt that the designers have never really done a great job communicating intent on how they intend for people to play the game, much less discussing the intent of how more complex rules should work to help alleviate any potential confusion. It's like they write only from the mindset of understanding what they mean and not from one of trying to teach a player what they mean and it's forever causing problems and it's something I've wanted changed for a long time.

As for the PR side of things, I feel like it's a grab bag. Like they refused to mention what caused Cursed City to go from long term to support to gone, but then they've occasionally been more open to talking about shipping delays or the latest price increase. I feel like it comes down to whose in charge of whatever they're reporting on (or not reporting on) passing the information onto them or not over the community team proper but that's me assuming that middle management is a scourge that ruins everything again.

Andykp wrote:


No it isn’t. We are all well aware of the incident that is doing lauded to.

There's a world of difference between "ur rule suck dude you should die lol" and "What you've done to the game is terrible, I'm going to come to your home at [Person's address] and [detailed threats of extreme violence]".

Both are considered death threats but one is more serious than the other. Unless you have copies of the actual threats received I'm gonna guess most (probably all) of the threats were in the style of the former rather than the latter.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
It's also a wonderful distraction to the actual topic, and allows certain people to steer us clear away from any criticism (or even analysis) of GW because of vague and meaningless death threats (which are to the Internet what saying "Hello" is in real life) sent years ago.

I wasn't trying to close a lid on anything, just point out that it wasn't a single instance, but a pattern of instances that seem to have made the studio team, their management or perhaps someone higher up in the company (if not all the above) decide to pull their names off the books.

Here's the thing though, if the Death threats were really THAT rampant we'd have investigations on it. Unless I hear more about that, I suspect they're just being criticized (rightfully so) and don't want to admit to it.

And this thread sums all that is wrong with this community, not all of it but there are too many in the “community” who say really dumb things, either through malice or trying to seem edgy. Either way the make the whole community look bad. That’s what happens when a section of the community say dumb things in the communities name, looking at you all on here.

In this thread, Gert and I have both criticised GW, openly and clearly, but all of a sudden we are being apologists for GW because we dared to say it’s not okay to send death threats. WTF!

It’s gone from, some death threats are jokes, to everyone sends death threats nowadays it’s fine. I like to think you all are saying this in an attempt to sound cool, but it isn’t working.

I tried in my last post to steer things back on topic as well. So don’t blame me or Gert for this being dragged of topic.

Dismissing death threat isn't trying to "sound cool", it's being realistic and treating every death threat you get online as a serious issue is stupid. If you're a public figure (especially one with as volitile a fanbase as 40k)you're going to get them. It's part of internet culture, especially when your main target audience is teenage edgibois and your game involves a lot of violence and edgyness. Random death threats from literal nobodies isn't a good reason for GW to stop being transparent with the community. Especially when they came BEFORE their increased transparency and the ones you're referring to weren't even directed at GW.

You're being treated as apologists because you're falling down the usual "blame the community" hole that apologists tend to shove things into when they don't have any actual defence to counter with. This whole tangent started because someone brought up GWs community content policy and how it upset the fanbase and Gert immediatly replied with "WELL ACKCHOOALAY THE COMMUNITY IS BAD AS WELL" for some reason.

This thread is completely humiliating. Half the people on it are arguing that death threats are totally fine and not a big deal, and the other half are arguing that anyone who dislikes GW's policies surrounding fan media should feel as if they are responsible for those death threats. No wonder this argument has gone on for so long; each party has been provided a completely nonsensical opposing opinion they can spend their time raging against.

 Gert wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

Exhibit A:

 Gert wrote:

Said community also sent death threats to someone to who GW offered a job so let's not pretend they're the good guys here.

Death threats are raised in order to villify the entire community.

Actually, it was raised because people were going back down the "GW is evil because they got rid of fan content" road and people should be reminded what fans did in response. People on Dakka especially have a hard time actually staying to the truth on this particular issue and either make up fake grievances i.e. "GW canceled TTS" or brush the bad actions of the community under the carpet because it doesn't suit their narrative.

Being evil by not actually changing anything That was the funny thing. What was allowed/not allowed didn't actually change one bit.

Andykp wrote:
In this thread, Gert and I have both criticised GW, openly and clearly, but all of a sudden we are being apologists for GW because we dared to say it’s not okay to send death threats. WTF!

No no no sir. It was said that the 'community' could be ignored because the 'community' sent death threats. As a member of the 'community' I'd like to say that I've never made any sort of threat to anybody at GW. But the notion that people with criticisms of GW should be lumped in with some minority that made death threats is so ridiculous that it absolutely deserves to be made fun of.

Any creator of basically anything of note gets hyperbolic vitriol thrown at them, especially online (and especially women). Nobody said it was 'good'. It just happens to be the times we live in. GWs audience is HUUUUGE. The net it casts on humanity because of that giant audience means that net pulls up some pretty awful people with some pretty awful behavior. Let's say that only 0.1% of individuals are the type to send a death threat. That means if the audience is 1 million, that still means 1,000 death threats. I dunno how big GWs audience is, but I bet GW gets a truckload of hate mail because of it.

So let's state for the record that sending death threats is BAD. Yes?

Now let's take a moment to reflect and also recognize that collectively ignoring/punishing/labeling ANY group of people by equating a whole group with the absolute worst actors within said group is also BAD. (possibly worse, as it is often the foundation of institution-levels of violence) Are we willing to recognize this?

Now, as to the usefulness of vitriol to a company/creative enterprise/youtuber/whatever. At the end of the day, you can still try to see where people are coming from with their criticisms, or at the very least, try to get metrics on it to gauge upticks in negativity following releases or whatever. I'll say that I definitely worked at a company that couldn't put the big-boy pants on and refused to meaningfully engage with negative criticism, leading to internally disrespecting their audience, arguably leading to product failure. It's important to get the signal through the noise. The flipside is that once you've really gotten the feedback, no matter how vitriolic, you can choose to enact or disregard it as you please.

I recall working with a guy whose internal email was sigged with some awful quote about his work online. It was played for laughs, and was legit funny. Having a strategy to cope with vitriol is just part of certain enterprises.

tneva82 wrote:

 Gert wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

Exhibit A:

 Gert wrote:

Said community also sent death threats to someone to who GW offered a job so let's not pretend they're the good guys here.

Death threats are raised in order to villify the entire community.

Actually, it was raised because people were going back down the "GW is evil because they got rid of fan content" road and people should be reminded what fans did in response. People on Dakka especially have a hard time actually staying to the truth on this particular issue and either make up fake grievances i.e. "GW canceled TTS" or brush the bad actions of the community under the carpet because it doesn't suit their narrative.

Being evil by not actually changing anything That was the funny thing. What was allowed/not allowed didn't actually change one bit.

I mean a lot of stuff goes on for years and no one thinks it's bad until someone points out that it's bad.

 Insectum7 wrote:


Any creator of basically anything of note gets hyperbolic vitriol thrown at them, especially online (and especially women). Nobody said it was 'good'.

Okey I have seen this said a lot, but how was that measured? In industries that interest men, aside maybe for porn, men make up the most of the people in the industry. By law of avarges there is no way women could be getting more threat or critique thrown at them, when they are a much smaller group. Even if each and every one of them was getting them no stop there there still don't make more then 1/3 of all developers in the gaming industry. I can't think of any DT member of any GW game who is a woman, and I have feeling it is similar with most other table top games.

Now let's take a moment to reflect and also recognize that collectively ignoring/punishing/labeling ANY group of people by equating a whole group with the absolute worst actors within said group is also BAD.

I can think about more then a few groups of people where you very well can collectively call each one of them bad.

And in GW case I think their mail for contact with clients is auto response and aside for, maybe the polls, they make every few years they don't really care what their player base wants or doesn't want.

a good podcast (vidcast?) about that topic and the change of GWs attitude

https://youtu.be/PRo8DWc28H0

 kodos wrote:
a good podcast (vidcast?) about that topic and the change of GWs attitude

https://youtu.be/PRo8DWc28H0

Can you summarise it? I don't fancy listening to some guy for 35mins talk about click bait.

 Insectum7 wrote:
I think it ought to be understood that death threats are basically rampant, especially in the lazy anonymity of the internet age. Any figure of "reasonable public stature" should kind of expect them as part of the territory. That's not to say they're good or anything, they're just part of doing business at some point. It sucks, but it just is.

If I ever get one I'll frame it. It means I've arrived, lol.

If I stopped playing games online after getting a death threat I'd have never made it through the first game lol


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Andykp wrote:
And this thread sums all that is wrong with this community, not all of it but there are too many in the “community” who say really dumb things, either through malice or trying to seem edgy. Either way the make the whole community look bad. That’s what happens when a section of the community say dumb things in the communities name, looking at you all on here.

In this thread, Gert and I have both criticised GW, openly and clearly, but all of a sudden we are being apologists for GW because we dared to say it’s not okay to send death threats. WTF!

It’s gone from, some death threats are jokes, to everyone sends death threats nowadays it’s fine. I like to think you all are saying this in an attempt to sound cool, but it isn’t working.

I tried in my last post to steer things back on topic as well. So don’t blame me or Gert for this being dragged of topic.

I think a lot of people are making the point that if you're even slightly in the public image. Or dare I say just on Twitter. You're gonna get death threats simply because people can

Does it make it right? No, obviously. But with a level of anonymity you'll get it no matter what

This thread seems to have spiralled well off topic.