LogFAQs > #896400931

shipwreckers posted...

Companies will blame everything EXCEPT themselves for low sales. That's why the "vote with your wallet" concept is so absurd. Even if literally everyone boycotted a game (as in, zero sales, not even one), there's still no guarantee that the company will actually learn the NATURE of their error, much less correct it.

If you want to make a dent, then you (and thousands upon thousands of others) have to be vocal, just like when EA got reddit bombed over Battlefront II. Burying a product in a sea of negative reviews is a good start.

But here's the thing - companies don't care (much) about negative press, they care about sales. Think of all the shit EA and Activision have taken over scummy microtransactions... then you learn that they made $787 million and $4 billion respectively off of those same transactions. With that in mind, do you think they are less likely to put microtransactions in future games or more?

If you want a product to improve, you have to do both. You have to "vote with your wallet", but you also have to be very vocal about why you are boycotting and try and draw the company's attention to it. If they see lots of complaining and lots of sales, they won't bother fixing anything because there's no impetus to do so. The only reason why negative publicity works as an incentive to fix something is because it usually leads to poor sales; if that isn't the case, negative publicity is just meaningless noise that companies are free to ignore (especially in an industry - like gaming - that is notorious for its negativity and where a small number of people can make a disproportionate amount of noise regarding things they don't like).
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