I'm all for customers apply pressure through their buying habits, as you say that's entirely ethical. It's your right as a citizen. However most people don't know about any of this stuff and they shouldn't really have to.
Companies are huge organisations, many of them have many conscientious and ethical employees that do a lot that's great, but then some that are less ethical or are under a lot of pressure or have few options all shitty and bad things happen. Most of those things we never hear about. The chances that this one thing you hear about is truly representative and differentiating from the competition is probably actually pretty unlikely.
So sure, especially if you have a cause close to your heart that's fine. We should be holding companies to account, but laws and regulators exist for a reason. They represent us and are our primary tool for dealing with this sort of issue.
Of course not everything is black and white, but its probably more ethical to not play something from a company with clear violations of ethical rules than not.
Of course using a product from a company implies supporting or not caring enough about it.
There is no need for you to play games from blizzard.
I personally bought and play Diablo 2 and not because i think its 'ethical' to do so but because i actually care less about the current blizzard controversy than i care about playing a game which has very strong childhood memories.
I'm fully aware that i'm doing what plenty of others are doing:
- Driving by car while we are aware of climate change - sometimes keeping my PC running while not necessary - Buying sweet and highly processed food - Not using my money to help people to eat
And if we all would actually be more aware of this and agree altogether we could make the earth a much more awesome place. But thats not how it is.
that would rule out anything recent by Blizzard then
While we can (and should!) agitate for policy changes to reduce fossil fuel usage, it's appropriate to request that, I do not consider that it would be ethically appropriate for me or you to demand total "fossil abstinence" from any person around us - freedom and respecting others' freedom is also a valid ethical value, and actually imposing your will on others requires substantial justification, and having ethical ends do not imply all means would be ethical.
Not buying a game in game saturated market is not that hard or essential to quality of life
>Guilt by distant association is an abhorrent concept that should not be validated - using someone's products does not imply supporting the company's policies or leaders/owners personal behavior or political actions
eliding the simple fact that buying products from a company, shitty or otherwise, is literally supporting that company and its owners. I can't think of a more meaningful way to support something than to give it money...
We should be less concerned with consequences and more concerned with actions in themselves. Buying an iphone is not "supporting slave labor". Paying taxes is not supporting your government's foreign policy. Turning on the heater is not killing the planet.
> eliding the simple fact that buying products from a company, shitty or otherwise, is literally supporting that company and its owners.
No, it's literally paying money in exchange for a good or service.
> I can't think of a more meaningful way to support something than to give it money...
You can't? That's somewhat shocking.
>>> eliding the simple fact that buying products from a company, shitty or otherwise, is literally supporting that company and its owners.
>No, it's literally paying money in exchange for a good or service.
No, it's supporting the company. The company wouldn't exist if buying things from it didn't support it. Companies need money to support their supply chains, workers, and management, in order to sell things in order to make money. What does "supporting a company" mean to you? Taking it out to the pub after a bad breakup? Ridiculous. Companies, the general economic unit of our capitalist world, are fed by money, be it VC or customer. "Vote with your dollar" is woefully inadequate to address the problem, but beyond building pipe bombs it's the most efficacious tool we as individuals can wield.
Your moral thinking is so impoverished that you conclude by recommending "building pipe bombs". Back to the drawing board.
Your moral thinking is so incredibly wealthy that you can't accept that financially supporting slavery is wrong.
IMHO the core concept of a civilized society is the ability to have reasonable interactions even if people strongly disagree or hate each other - thus the legitimacy of doing business with, supplying products to everyone and using everyone's products.
To use a different controversy as an example where both sides are somewhat large, we do see both ends of the abortion debate consider each other as grossly unethical, sufficiently unethical to justify asking for a boycott of vocal supporters of the opposite side. That's understandable, you have freedom of association and you can not patronize someone you despise, however, once you start to demand that others join your boycott and say it's an ethical duty or "with us or against us" IMHO that's crossing the line of how a civilized society should behave; people holding all kinds of opinions (including various opinions I despise and consider harmful) are still part of our society, and we should be able to combine criticizing the abhorrent opinions while still allowing those people to participate in society - i.e. buying from them, selling to them, employing them, working for them, renting them apartments and renting from them as landlords - and "platforming entities" as well, even if they are from your "enemy outgroup". I very much do not want internet service providers or pamphlet printing companies or fast food deliveries to start refusing service to my political opponents vocally advocating for things I consider ethically despicable - that form of exclusion is simply not appropriate, and I would not consider it fair if I was on the receiving end, so what's sauce for goose is sauce for gander.
Asking for a proper exclusion of an unliked group or opinion reminds me of all kinds of centuries-old historical issues of boycotting shops because they were ran by [people from the political party hated in this neighbourhood] or [someone who doesn't go to the same church as us] or [this ethnic group with whom we had/have war], which (at least in retrospective) seem unethical - IMHO it's much safer to draw the line at excess inclusion rather than excess exclusion.
Why not use this logic to justify buying from a supplier who uses slavery, because what if you were the slaver? Is there anything someone can do to justify another's refusal to buy from them in future? I assume you wouldn't buy from someone who ripped you off somehow; would you consider this to be a moral failing on the part of the seller? Is slavery a moral failing?
>Asking for a proper exclusion of an unliked group or opinion reminds me of all kinds of centuries-old historical issues of boycotting shops because they were ran by [people from the political party hated in this neighbourhood] or [someone who doesn't go to the same church as us] or [this ethnic group with whom we had/have war], which (at least in retrospective)
I don't think "C-suite execs who use slave labour to save a buck" is the sort of protected group that you're invoking here, and IMO comparing them is hideous. You're suggesting that "someone doing something unethical" is the same as "someone doing something I don't like", and therefore boycotting either is essentially the same thing.
>IMHO it's much safer to draw the line at excess inclusion rather than excess exclusion
"Ethical" is subjective, not objective, so yes ... "someone doing something I don't like" is literally the same meaning as "someone doing something unethical".
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
My observation is that everyone who quotes this link hasn't read the original source, or else they'd know that it doesn't support their argument, and instead is a support against their argument.
Who does a boycott really hurt?
The largest shareholders? ATVI has dropped significantly since this episode started. The assumption is this forces changes in management and leads to changes to address the toxic culture that triggered the boycott (more likely general instability hurting confidence in ATVI's ability to deliver).
It looks like that's how this is playing out.
I'd argue that the answer to that question is "yes", no matter if it's Blizzard or some other company. It's completely ethically valid to boycott a shitty company with shitty leadership and shitty culture (as OP puts it), however, it's also completely ethically valid to not boycott such a company and simply pick the best product. There is no ethical duty to participate in every fight; it's ethically good (and better) to "fight for good" but it's also completely ethically acceptable to not put effort in any one of the near-infinite of those fights - it's only unethical if you're actually harming others or doing evil, and just living your life is not that.
Guilt by distant association is an abhorrent concept that should not be validated - using someone's products does not imply supporting the company's policies or leaders/owners personal behavior or political actions. If you want to make a point of ostracising someone, sure, go right ahead, but there's a very high bar to pass to state that it would an ethical requirement for everyone else to participate in that ostracism - IMHO it might be debatable if it would be a an ethical requirement in case of clearly convicted murderers, and even more so in cases which are (a) less severe than murder and (b) the particular culprits less clearly proven.