Indeed, actions speak louder than words, but in this specific case, making a public statement is itself a very significant action. After all, it was nothing but public statements that are the center of the controversy.

No, the controversy is the punishing of people who dared speak out. Nobody has spoken out for Sweeney to fire or otherwise punish. So his are empty words.

> Statements mean and accomplish nothing.

Yet a statements is what started all this in the video game world. Blitzchung was banned from making a statement. Tim Sweeney did a statement right now, in support to what Blitzchung did. This statement will have repercussion. You may not believe that the content of the statement is truthful, but it doesn't change that Tim Sweeney accepted the repercussion caused by that statement, which is already quite important.

Except he didn’t say anything against China nor did he express support for Hong Kong. He played it extremely safe and didn't say anything to anger the Chinese, but enough to appease the gullible public. Statements aren’t all the same. Just because he says something doesn’t mean it’s on the same level as Blitz who explicitly expressed support for HK. And people need to stop being happy about empty statements.

That is definitely true, but you can applaud a commitment to not do something negative. The thing is you can't ever really say "look they did what they promised" when they are promising not to do something. We just have to applaud the public commitment and then shit on them if they backpedal or don't live up to it really.

How is anyone being 'fucked over' by Tim Sweeney? He is a legendary programmer who built his company up using his own significant programming abilities.

The people who buy games on steam that he then buys exclusivity rights to. The games people help kickstart with the promise of it being on a platform which is then purchased as exclusive. He’s screwing a lot of people.

Shouldn't they be mad at Steam for cutting access to a game they bought? Why aren't they mad at the company that bait and switched them?

It wasn’t cut by steam. It was cut by epic. Steam updated its terms to prevent removal in the future.

To be clear, a game was on Steam, Steam took people's money, Steam let the game be removed from people that bought it, Steam didn't give people their money back, and people blame Epic?

To be clear. The people who bought it on steam got to keep it. But it didn’t change the fact it’s a shitty move on epics part. People on Kickstarter never got what they funded as they paid for steam and the game never arrived to steam because of epic. So so trying to defend epics shitty tactics.

We need competition but not how epic is going about it.

If people got their game on Steam and got to keep it, how did Epic cut it and how did people get screwed over?

For the Kickstarter, did people pay to buy the game and not get it while not being refunded? We're they promised a copy of the game while not receiving it?