““[It was] an experiment to see how far we can get to see how corrupt blizzard [sic] as a whole truly is”

Oh, bullshit. Even if that were true, the only thing it accomplishes is alienating and hurting black players. Y’know, like a blatantly racist team would want to do. Fuck, we live in exhausting times. 

That recurring bite, sting and burn of racism is why I quit playing games like COD and Overwatch unfortunately. My “friends?” couldn’t understand why I would quit two games that I honestly excelled at over people being stupid and racist but I tried to explain to them that the mental toil of constantly seeing and…

Wow, thank you so much. I really appreciate your kind words here. They do indeed mean a lot on days like today.

I rarely comment. But you’re the shit Ash. I’ve enjoyed reading your work. And this a bum out to read. Just wanted to throw some positivity your way in shit times, from a long time reader of this site, recent reader of your work, and consumer of most nerd related things.

If Google acted like Apple, we’d be faced with an effective duopoly. They’re not though, so half of us still have a choice. Sucks to be an Apple user who are under an effective monopoly of what apps they can buy. Not the most egregious case, but the power disparity inherent in that (monopoly-ish) relationship is…

Your electric company is a utility.  Utilities are exempt from anti-trust legislation.

You know, a lot of people are quick to call one party or the other names without really thinking this through. Sure, this is a battle of behemoths and one tried to paint itself as an underdog to generate support from the masses, though the message itself is a bit nebulous given the age and references involved - which…

When real human beings who don’t have to go to Webster for their answers talk about monopolies, things like duopolies and oligopolies are natural extensions of the conversation. “Actually, there are 2 of them” is not the stellar rebuttal you think it is.

Regarding the legality? The argument by Epic is that this is more about antitrust laws, that Apple has such a large portion of the market and absolute control over everything that happens on their devices that it’s allowed them to use one monopoly (that iOS is the only operating system allowed on iPhones and iPads) to…

This is legit all just one cynical & theatrical ploy to mobilize a bunch of pre-pubescent children with their parents credit cards to practice cancel-culture against Apple on their behalf, because they have 0 legal ground to push back on this. The whole lawyering up thing is an empty vessel. I don’t get to sue my…

But it is crossing a line. It’s literally using the principles laid out in 1984 to get its users to fight against another company in the Brand Loyalty Wars.

It’s also blindly obvious how they’re trying to manipulate their audience by framing it in the game world. Whether people get it or not, the ‘Evil Apple’ is a bad guy and that’s why you can’t have your game on your phone. It’s pretty gross and honestly worse than what Apple is actually doing.

Except only a small handful of people will remember Apple used the commercial, but a large majority know what 1984 was. It’s stupid on Epic Games part when we have such serious issues going on with our socio-political atmosphere to try to frame their contract-breaking fight-picking as some kind of ideological battle.…

Monopolies don’t have to force you to buy something to be a monopoly.

Apparently nobody forced you to learn what a monopoly is, either. 

Nothing like hostile smugness from someone who hasn’t bothered to read my clear disgust with Apple’s treatment of Chinese people.

He did

The misuse of coordinated harassment discourse around this is kinda despicable

I don’t give a shit about games when they’re compared to actual human suffering under an oppressive government.

Came down to the comments to say exactly this. I figured the commercial was just going to be a clever jab until the writing came up at the end and I out-loud said “Oh, go FUCK yourselves.”