This post is somewhat inspired by a recent post in this same community called “Is anyone else having trouble giving up Reddit due to content?”
I imagine “Reddit” will be a common answer. (And it’s one of my answers.)
Another of my answers is “Hasbro.” First Wizards of the Coast (a Hasbro subsidiary) tried to revoke an irrevokable license and screw over basically all 3rd-party publishers of D&D content, then they sent literal mercinaries to threaten one of their customers over an order mixup that wasn’t even the customer’s fault. D&D: Honor Among Thieves and the latest Transformers look really good, but those are within the scope of my boycott, so I won’t be seeing those any time soon.
Third, Microsoft. (Apple too, but then I’ve never bought any Apple devices in my life, so it hardly qualifies as a boycott.) Just because of their penchant for using devices I own against me in every way they can imagine. And for really predatory business practices.
One boycott that I’ve ended was a boycott of Nintendo. I was pissed that they started marketing The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (though it didn’t have a name at the time) before the WiiU came out, prompting me to be an early adopter of the WiiU, and then when they actually released BotW, they dual-released it on WiiU and Switch. I slightly eased my boycott when the unpatchable Fusee Gilee vulnerability for the first batch of Switches was discovered. I wanted to get one of the ones I could hack and run homebrew on before they came out with a model that lacked the vulnerability.
A little bit different, but Caseking will never get my business. They have a booth at Gamescom right now where you can race in a simrig and try to get the best time of the day. There is also a time of a pro which you can try to beat, and if you do and are the fastest at the end of the day you get a 200€ discount on Moza Racing.
Here comes the problem though, they ran the wrong game for more than half a day (AC instead of ACC) and when telling them that with the configuration of the circuit (Nürburgring with the slower chicane as the last to last corner) the time was simply impossible to beat. They just laughed at me and making it look like I had a skill-issue and am simply not good enough to beat the time. When I came back in the last hours they switched over to ACC but were driving a wrong, slower car making the challenge still not beatable. I tried to tell them this once again but they continued to just laugh and ignore me. If you ask me they dont want anybody to win the coupon and are just ripping people off
99% of my media consumpion (movies, tv series, books…) is, how do I put it, “free of charge”… so techincally I boycott anything that is not my local movie theater/library
it’s not boycotting if you still consume it, you are just not paying for it
Amazon, Google (except for YouTube, there’s really no alternative), Facebook, Twitter and social media in general, EA, Ubisoft and Epic Games, Nestlé and food with excessive plastic wrapping, food delivery services
I’m still boycotting Wizards of the Coast over the OGL drama. In addition to being against open and shared content in their game system, I was getting tired of their half baked books with no substance coming so frequently that I just couldn’t keep up with it. When they announced their own Virtual Tabletop software, I knew it was only a matter of time before you couldn’t even play D&D 5e on another platform so I bailed and I’m not looking back.
being against open and shared content
Absolute newb regarding non-video games here. What do you mean by that? How do they stop players from sharing content?
So, part of what it seems like they were doing was setting up their new license to begin restricting smaller creators and groups from being able to create premium content for their game system without paying exorbitant fees to WotC.
Also if they create a “preferred” VTT system or environment that they own, only release official content to this system, they kill other VTTs that their audience is already using, and push them all to their software. Notes from meetings with WotC and Hasbro all began to sound like a big push to add microtransactions to a tabletop game and corner their audience into spaces where they will get a piece of any profit being made related to D&D, which is a far cry from the open and collaborative license that we had all enjoyed up until recently. It is all just scummy corporate bs and I’m not going to give them any more of my money until they stop.Whats VTT, virtual table top? Like a companion app to support playing sessions? Sounds like they were more open regarding custom content than they legally had to in the past and now they are taking these grants away from the community? Like using official content and names in custom adventures and selling them?
Yeah, a virtual tabletop, which due to covid, have exploded in popularity over the last few years. What it really feels like in the community was that between the “Golden Age” of D&D 3-3.5 and even the “Dark Ages” of 4th edition, the publishers at Wizards of the Coast at the time had intended to license most of the ability to make and create content for D&D and share it openly and the original Open Games License at the time was written such that it couldn’t be revoked and that content for D&D would be able to be created and shared openly. The new OGL being pushed by WotC attempts to retract the previous license and includes language that states that WotC owns or has rights to any and all content published for D&D by third party homebrewers, and any profits made up to a ridiculously high number made by third parties was owed to WotC, which is a complete 180 from the previous OGL and many people were rightfully angry about it.
Thank you for explaining!
Ubisoft, for at least 10 years.
Reddit since the API changes were announced
Cars - Even if it makes my life extremely difficult in today’s day and age, I’ve decided to try my best not getting/buying a car. I’m in Europe, so this is much easier to do than in US, and I want to see how far can I go with a bike or public transport only.
Blizzard, Bungie, Activision, Bethesda (at least titles developed by them) - anti consumer practices, even though some of the games are definitely good. As for Bethesda, I still would be down to buy games published but not developed by them, though the only one I’ve ever gotten was Dishonored.
Google and Microsoft - terrible privacy, tries to monopolize things. Actual evil companies and I don’t really like them, switched them out completely from my daily desktop life and I couldn’t be happier.
Honest questions if you don’t mind. How do you avoid Google? I understand the want/need to avoid them, but not knowing any better (like most people i imagine) opted in for everything because it’s just so convenient and their apps work so well. So how do you get out without completely disrupting your whole life. Gmail, calendar, maps, keep, sheets, docs… I understand there’s alternate open source versions of them all, but none of them really seem to work as well, and do the apps really not track you? How do you get out of Gmail? So you now have to abandon it or can you forward to thunderbird or something ?
I slowly degoogled my life. It took me a lot of babysteps and a couple of years but it was well worth it and sound pretty impressive now: My phone runs Lineage OS with MikroG, I use OsmAnd for maps, NeoStore for open source apps and Aurora Store for like three apps I really want from the Play Store. I pay 1€ per month for my email-provider and get calendars, tasks and contacts, which I sync with DavX5 to my phone and computer. I run Linux on my Desktop PC since a couple of months and love it so far. My router runs through a Raspberry Pi with Pi-hole, which catches a lot of telemetry and ads.
You’re right, sometimes it’s a little less polished or convenient, but that’s okay because I never forced myself. That’s how I got this far I think.
Oh there are a lot. Nestlé and Amazon are the most important ones. I can’t really say I boycott social media such a Facebook or Instagram because I do not really care about them. Boycotting includes an active action for me
Im kinda doing the same. Cant say I always do. If im very hungry after a party and only the nearest gas station is open, i grab a snickers.
But what kind of active action are you talking about? Not using facebook seems like a legit boycott of it. Is it actively speaking about not using it and informing other people?
Sometimes I go shopping for groceries and see something I like, then I see it is Nestlé - I am actively boycotting it. Same with Amazon, I actively order in other shops and pay 10€ more just to not support Amazon.
On the other hand I do not buy olives, not because I boycott them - I just don’t like the taste of olives. Same is with Facebook or Instagram, I do not feel a need for it, I just don’t care for their products. Does that make sense?
btw. I fucking love olives, just tried to make a good example
At this point, what am I not boycotting? lol
I guess this is the abridged no-go list:
- Nestle (duh)
- BP (still haven’t forgiven them for lubricating the Gulf of Mexico and being like “oops, sorry”)
- Verizon (injecting tracking IDs into customer web traffic to sell to advertisers while also charging me $60/mo for 2 GB of data – I’m a product or a customer. I will not be both.)
- RWNJ-owned businesses (Chick-fil-A, In-n-Out, Hobby Lobby, Applebees, etc)
- AT&T (After so many years, I forget exactly why, but they’re just evil)
- The entire states of Florida and Texas
- The lottery (I’d have the same payout and more fun just setting the money on fire)
- Microsoft (It’s MY computer, not yours)
- Apple (Overpriced hardware, control-freak walled garden, everything needs a damn $29 dongle, etc)
- Reddit, Facebook, Twitter (also blocked in firewall)
- Amazon (except the 2-3 times a year they give me a free month of Prime and I buy all my stuff, take the free 1-2 day shipping and cancel before they bill me)
Late additions:
- Exxon (knew about climate change for over 40 years; spent millions promoting misinformation/denialism)
- Bank of America (used to work there - will never bank there. Oh, you’re poor? There’s a fee for that - several, actually)
