Look, I just want to know if he’s a lone wolf or if I need to condemn an entire ethnicity. Please advise.

Of all these guys alleged crimes, it’s his grammar that I think is what he should get the chair for. 

It’s pretty clear he hasn’t and won’t.

“bemoaned the “hate and negativity toward” him"

In February, Carruth said he wanted to be a father to his sonwhen he was released from prison. 

This is some f’ed up crap. This is how we allow corporations control everything. I used to not care, but this is getting out of control.

Let’s be real. If I was working at Rockstar I would not just suddenly feel able to actually complain about any concerns or worries I have. This is less a chance for folks to legitimately open up and more like when Amazon warehouse workers are like “It’s fine! I never even think about urinating anymore!”

Dozens of people have approached me anonymously, actually. (Check out the last graf of this story.)

Few to no people currently-employed would speak openly about horror-stories for fear of being fired, or at best, sidelined. That said Jason is well-known within the industry and I’m sure if conditions were bad, he’d be approached on condition of anonymity. So, I’m inclined to believe conditions at Rockstar are pretty…

Yeah, all these positive stories that are being circulated on social media as a result of Rockstar sending a company wide email telling their employees to share positive stories on social media seems ... forced somehow.

I think you’re broadly right. Younger kids have no memory of games being discrete products that you bought and played, rather than weird monetized interfaces you bought, and subscribed to, and paid any number of surcharges into for the privilege of unlocking their contents.

This guy scares me. This casual acceptance—and even delight—at having branding in the game is a hallmark of “the way things are now.”

I have a theory that it’s younger gamers who are putting up with this, because they literally don’t remember a time when you just bought the game, got experience (or whatever) and continued having fun with the game.

I’m very grossed out by the people popping in with comments like “So you don’t think you should have to work to get good at the game?” Your MyCareer player’s overall rating is not an index of how good you are at playing the game. Those are two completely different things!

I’m grossed out (but not surprised, of course) by the presence of real-world brand advertisements in a game I paid for, yeah. In effect, when you buy NBA 2K19, you are paying powerful corporations to advertise to you, and that’s pretty sickening.

Isn’t it kind of delightfully fucked that people actually DO become so loyal to a brand (in this case, 2K) they angrily defend an at-best cynical system designed to waste your time until you break and pay money to get to the fun part where your player is good and you win games?

Oh no, I certainly didn’t mean to imply that my player has reached his ceiling. It’s theoretically possible for me to get him all the way to a 99 overall, eventually. But the grind is really incredibly slow and tedious, if you’re not willing to spend real-world money on VC. And it’s very gross that one of the ways you…

Hardcore 2k player here: To me, the MyTeam mode is the one that really is the worst of all worlds.

It’s always nice to be told I don’t understand the subject matter by someone who didn’t understand the article.

In the abstract, I don’t have a problem with the game throttling your progress or funneling your player into certain discrete skillsets, both so that the online experience isn’t crammed with uniform Giannis clones and for the sake of trying to simulate something like the grind of improving as an NBA player. But…