I’m more surprised that anyone gives a shit at all that they have the time to go do something like a review bomb or try to organise a boycott. People must have a lot of free time on their hands, I barely have time to play a video game, let alone sacrifice valuable free time to go organise a boycott.

If a game is bad or costs too much, I just forget about it and move on. Loads of other things I have to do with my day, and there are a billion other games I can play instead.

I played Warhammer 2 a bit, but saw their shitty patches that broke the game every time, so I just uninstalled it and forgot about it, and CA. I recommend people do that instead. Loads of other fun games to play instead.

I agree the larger philosophy behind BLM isn’t a brand, but the slogan “BLM” is a brand.

To me personally, BLM is kind of stupid, the correct slogan we should all be wearing is ACAB, because from everything I have seen, US police are just as happy assaulting and killing anyone who gets in their way, regardless of colour. Cops in the US just want to kill people, it’s an us versus them mentality, and I’d say it’s pretty colour blind, like those 5 Nashville black cops who tortured and killed that black motorist. And I remember seeing the Atlanta BLM protests in 2020, and there were loads of black cops horrifically beating protestors too. It’s honestly not a black problem, it’s a blue vs everyone else problem.

And then some of the absolute worst police killings I’ve seen have been white cops killing white people, such as Daniel Shaver, Ryan Whitaker, and Officer Longman of Utah.

Some cops are definitely racially biased, but it’s hardly Mississippi Burning anymore, even in the South. What is a problem is a general militarisation of police and complete lack of oversight or consequences for their actions.

But make no mistake, any cop would just love to kill you to make his or her day, whether you’re white or black.

I agree with you about that, but these employees have chosen to do a job where they come face to face with customers daily, and some of those customers may get offended by seeing an employee wearing a BLM badge, in red states for example. The company doesn’t want to antagonise a potential customer and lose a sale, so they’re asking that no employees wear any political markings. And honestly, I think that’s a fair request if you work in a customer-facing role.

Notice that this ruling only applies to Whole Foods workers, not Amazon warehouse workers, who can probably wear whatever they want since they don’t deal with customers.

You actually can fire people based on their political beliefs, because believe it or not, political affiliation is not a protected class under current US federal law (maybe some state law though). There are only 7 current federally protected classes: age, race, sex, religion, marital status, disability, and sexual orientation. That’s why Republicans have been announcing they want to make political affiliation a protected class soon, because I guess that’s the next big battleground, is employers start to hire/fire based on politics.

I take your points, but I guarantee you this isn’t a decision about politics by Amazon, but purely a maximisation of revenue decision. Whole Foods employees interact with customers face to face, every day, all across the US, from blue states to red states. They know that their customers in some places consider BLM to be a political organisation, one that they don’t support, and that goes for proud boys, KKK, whatever. The point is, you don’t want to antagonise any customers coming in through the door, and corporate is aware that people are awfully sensitive these days and ready to kick off over any tiny thing, so to ensure no customer gets offended and takes their business elsewhere, and to ensure a policy which can be applied nationally for all states where Whole Foods exists, it’s just easier to say they won’t allow anything which their customers could potentially consider political.

That’s all this is, it’s not the political dog whistle some are making it out to be. This is just corporations wanting to remain neutral and take money from every customer, not just liberal ones. Hence I agree with this policy, it’s not coming from a bad place and it’s not an absurd request either.

And yes, as you said, not allowing someone to wear a religious article of clothing is a lawsuit waiting to happen, which will be a slam dunk, but this isn’t the same.

I think you’re way into the weeds here and forget the most important thing to remember about “freedom”: things like the Bill of Rights and the Constitution are a compact between you and the government, not you and private companies. Private companies don’t owe you anything besides whatever the government has expressly legislated, such as explicit protection for religious clothing and icons like crosses, Sikh turbans, etc.

However, beyond that, individual companies have the right to request their employees look and dress in certain ways. The flip side there is, if you don’t like those rules, you are free to not work there anymore.

Of course, legislators can always choose to pass laws forcing companies to allow more exemptions, but that hasn’t happened yet for displays of a political organisation.

It’s not just a corporate thing, police, military, and fire brigade aren’t allowed to wear overt political badging either.

There’s a general rule that if you work for an organisation which asks you to wear a work related uniform of some kind, you don’t get to add anything to it, political or otherwise. You don’t see bobbies with a Pink Floyd sticker on their chest.

BLM is a brand though. The lady who founded it just bought a £1.25M house in LA’s exclusive Topanga neighbourhood for all cash.

That doesn’t sound like some sort of grass roots, help lift people up, Mother Teresa sort of organisation to me.

Hence yeah, people don’t like BLM. Some don’t like what it stands for, while others, like me, don’t like it because the founders used it as a massive vehicle for grifting and lining their own pockets.

I’m with Amazon on this, seems a reasonable ask for employees to not wear any political/cultural/social things at work with their official uniform.

How much money do you get if you file?

Exactly, and I have written about how much I love GOG and Itch and why I hope they take more market share away from Steam.

There is no benefit, I never claimed the launcher within a launcher was a benefit.

The problem is the cancer that is Steam itself. We need more competing storefronts which don’t require the Steam launcher, and even better if there’s no launcher of any kind at all, just a binary to run to play the game.

Yeah, and GoG is fantastic and I’m so glad it exists. We need more DRM-free storefronts without launchers for sure.

It’s not just a launcher, it’s a storefront. Uplay, EA-whatever, and Rockstar Launcher are all storefronts where you can buy the games those companies make.

The launcher itself is a UI which lets you “launch” the game. Steam for example, is a launcher and a storefront, as is Uplay.

Having all your games in a single launcher/storefront is bad, as it gives a single company entire control over your games, and monopoly pricing.

Also remember that Steam takes a 30% cut, which is totally unnecessary, and is what directly caused giants like Ubisoft and Rockstar to make their own storefronts. Because why pay a 30% tax just for selling your game, this ain’t the 1990s anymore with CD-ROM pressings.

Fuck Steam and it’s monopolistic, 30% rent seeking bollocks.

Yeah, but why should Steam be the only game in town? That’s a very dangerous monopoly.