I mean, they had the same choice--not to work on fucking up the IP. And they have the potential to create suffering and annoyance to hundreds of thousands of people, instead of just a few people receiving grumpiness on the net.
This is a dynamic that has always existed in art and performance.
And for what it's worth, I don't think the option is "be nice" or "hurl abuse"...there is a distribution of behaviors and I'm suggesting that the more negative ones have their own reasons.
>>I mean, they had the same choice--not to work on fucking up the IP.
This argument always strikes me as something said by a child or a person who never had a job and never had to feed their family ever in their life. I work as a C++ programmer in a games company - I really don't care what you think of the changes that I make, I have a Jira list of tasks to get through and have to pay my bills at the end of the month. If you want to send hate mail to someone, there's a PR email you can contact - normal programmers working 9 to 5 have zero say in design decisions that upset people, nor do they have the time to follow the community - we have PR people for that.
Fine, be angry. Even if the reason for anger was justified, the abuse isn't. Write a scathing blog post, rant on youtube, don't buy future products, organize a boycott. Fine. Death threats, calling people at all hours, swatting them, harassing their employer, egging people on to do these things. That's abuse, and nothing that should ever happen because in your opinion someone "fucked up [their own] ip".
If you feel that somebody "fucked up" a product, don't use that product. It's really that simple, and it can be applied to every aspect of your life, not just games.
This is a dynamic that has always existed in art and performance.
And for what it's worth, I don't think the option is "be nice" or "hurl abuse"...there is a distribution of behaviors and I'm suggesting that the more negative ones have their own reasons.