After a three day event to show off new games for Stadia, along with three special demos now live you would think Google was having a good time. Unfortunately, one developer derailed it all.
For a quick recap of the Stadia event you can see day 1 here with a PAC-MAN Mega Tunnel Battle demo, day 2 here with the HUMANKIND demo and as for day 3: you can now play a free demo of the upcoming Immortals Fenyx Rising free, a new exclusive 'First on Stadia' title Young Souls was announced and the strategy game Phoenix Point is coming to Stadia in 2021. Additionally, Stadia's invite system is expanding so that if you do invite a friend to Stadia, that friend will get two months of Stadia Pro free and if continued after the free months you then get a month free too. See the Stadia community post for all the info on that.
So that all sounds pretty reasonable, some nice games coming to Google's Linux-powered streaming service Stadia. Where did it go wrong then? Well, Google are currently enjoying a serious round of bad press and Stadia ended up trending all across Twitter, and not for positive reasons.
The problem was Alex Hutchinson, who according to their Twitter bio was the "Creative Director for Google Stadia" that tweeted out these thoughts:
Streamers worried about getting their content pulled because they used music they didn't pay for should be more worried by the fact that they're streaming games they didn't pay for as well. It's all gone as soon as publishers decide to enforce it.
As a bit of context here, Twitch has caused a lot of issues lately due to DMCA take-downs due to copyrighted music. You can see an overview on The Verge.
Hutchinson followed that tweet with:
The real truth is the streamers should be paying the developers and publishers of the games they stream. They should be buying a license like any real business and paying for the content they use.
Hutchinson doubled down on these thoughts in another follow up tweet:
Amazing to me that people are upset at someone saying that the creators of content should be allowed to make some of the money from other people using their content for profit.
Not exactly a good look, coming from a person who works for a currently not exactly popular service streaming games. Even worse to post these up with a Twitter bio written like it was, doing more damage than intended to Stadia. However, Hutchinson is not the Creative Director of Stadia as their profile originally said. They actually worked for Typhoon Studios, which Google acquired and then became part of Stadia Games and Entertainment. So Hutchinson works for a smaller game studio that Google happens to now own to make games for Stadia. Hutchinson has since changed their Twitter bio to reflect that more clearly.
The problem though, is that Hutchinson's comments have been widely ridiculed and it caused Stadia to enjoy thousands of angry gamers, developers and publishers all calling out the comments. The original Twitter post has been quote-tweeted (where people quote it and make a direct comment above it) over four thousand times.
It's an easy argument to deconstruct for how ridiculous it is too. Showing off a game is nothing like playing music, or a movie. It's not static content, it's transformed by the person playing it and it's free advertising for the developer and publisher. You need only look at some of the most popular PC games around to see how livestreaming has caused massive surges in people buying those games like Among Us (source):
Care to guess when livestreamers picked it up? As another very quick example, here's what happened to Freehold Games with their roguelike Caves of Qud when a single video was done on it, to be clear this is their "whole sales history" (source):
There's plenty of other examples of this but you get the idea. There's a reason why so many developers have blanket statements up approving the use of their games in videos. Most understand it's important, and plenty directly pay streamers to take a look at their game. When talking about huge games from big publishers, most developers involved likely never see a penny from the games doing well anyway - only the people at the top do, which makes it even more ridiculous to want to see more money from people showing it off.
What Hutchinson said doesn't even match up with how Google are working with Stadia either. Google are building in streaming features to Stadia, gave out early access to livestreamers to show off Stadia and more. Google aren't dumb and they've distanced themselves very clearly from Hutchinson in a statement to 9to5Google:
The recent tweets by Alex Hutchinson, creative director at the Montreal Studio of Stadia Games and Entertainment, do not reflect those of Stadia, YouTube or Google.
As someone who personally purchased the Stadia Founders Edition, I have been watching in horror.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Quoting: 14Language "rant" incoming...Quoting: minfaerYou were understandably confused. Using the pronoun they for a singular person is a new trend and not what anyone was taught in English.Quoting: Liam DaweQuoting: minfaerBtw, the article confuses me. It sounds like Hutchinson tweeted this by himself, but then keeps using 'they' as if it was his studio's (or some groups) stance. Which is it?Hutchinson did tweet directly, not from a studio account. Perhaps you're tripping up on singular they? Don't know, hard to tell, as you didn't point out the parts confusing you. When talking about a person, using "they" is just pretty normal here.
Thanks for claryfing, that was indeed what tripped me up. Non-native speaker here
"they" is generally used if the gender of a person is unknown, which can happen with a name like Alex that fits both male and female. Languages can also have a generic masculine (actually, English used to, but that came out of practice since the 60s or so) or a generic feminine (which is what I was taught in school for English).
So nowadays it is drifting towards "they" and who knows, in 40 years we're probably back to "he"...
German, for example, generally uses the generic masculine, but of course the modern extremist variant of feminism has caused a movement to appear with the goal to replace it with the generic feminine as if that wouldn't be exactly the same thing - if you feel a generic masculine is exclusive (which is rubbish, but nvm), how is the generic feminine not exclusive (but I guess it's okay if it excludes men?).
Just to be clear, I'd be fine with either, but the idea that one would be better than the other... one can only shake their head at these people.
Other languages don't have a grammatical gender to begin with, like Finnish. When you read a sentence about a person in Finnish, you simply don't know their gender. You can read entire books without knowing if the protagonist is male or female (if it isn't relevant for the story or obvious from the name, etc.) - and nobody minds, because really, it shouldn't matter.
And trust me, they know how good they have it when they look at these absurd discussions going on right now ;)
Anyway, in this case, Liam could've looked it up to see it's a guy or just write they and save himself the trouble.
Both seem fine to me, really.
English has the advantage of being able to use "they" so people can save themselves the trouble of having to look up the gender of every person they write about. I get how it can confuse people not fluent, though. It's just one of the many oddities to learn about a language.
Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 25 October 2020 at 9:02 am UTC
Quoting: SchattenspiegelHonestly, it's feeling like you're jumping in here to cause a fuss. The context there is perfectly clear, the person is named and then I used a possessive pronoun to show the twitter account in question belongs to them.QuoteSo that all sounds pretty reasonable, some nice games coming to Google's Linux-powered streaming service Stadia. Where did it go wrong then? Well, they're currently enjoying a serious round of bad press and Stadia ended up trending all across Twitter, and not for positive reasons.Who's twitter bio? Stadias or Hutchinsons?
The problem was Alex Hutchinson, who according to their Twitter bio was the "Creative Director for Google Stadia" that tweeted out these thoughts:
Quoting: TheSHEEEPor just write theyThat is what I did and what people are taking issue with.
If people choose to keep arguing over pronouns, we will lock the comments to clean things up and remove the people who keep doing it. Stop it. Arguments over it are not permitted, please read the rules. If something is unclear, use the corrections report function we made specifically for issues like this. There's a dedicated box for corrections below the article, and a dedicated button also on the comments box so you can use either. Thank you.
Last edited by Liam Dawe on 25 October 2020 at 9:20 am UTC
Schattenspiegel Oct 25, 2020
Quoting: Liam DaweQuoting: SchattenspiegelHonestly, it's feeling like you're jumping in here to cause a fuss. The context there is perfectly clear, the person is named and then I used a possessive pronoun to show the twitter account in question belongs to them.QuoteSo that all sounds pretty reasonable, some nice games coming to Google's Linux-powered streaming service Stadia. Where did it go wrong then? Well, they're currently enjoying a serious round of bad press and Stadia ended up trending all across Twitter, and not for positive reasons.Who's twitter bio? Stadias or Hutchinsons?
The problem was Alex Hutchinson, who according to their Twitter bio was the "Creative Director for Google Stadia" that tweeted out these thoughts:
Quoting: TheSHEEEPor just write theyThat is what I did and what people are taking issue with.
If people choose to keep arguing over pronouns, we will lock the comments to clean things up and remove the people who keep doing it. Stop it. Arguments over it are not permitted, please read the rules. If something is unclear, use the corrections report function we made specifically for issues like this. There's a dedicated box for corrections below the article, and a dedicated button also on the comments box so you can use either. Thank you.
Sorry to hear you feel that way. You may have noticed that I originally used the correction box to avoid causing a fuss with remark about that, but since other readers stubbled over the same thing, I tied to explain the problem in more detail, in order to avoid confusion in the future. Should have stayed with the original idea of keeping it out of public comments. Apologies for that.
Nevertheless, if multiple people are having a problems understanding the meaning of your articles lately, then maybe you want to entertain the thought, that you did not express yourself as clearly as you thought.
Quoting: SchattenspiegelI appreciate the calm reply here to explain a bit more, thanks for that. I did do some re-wording in the main article text that hopefully made things clearer. In future though, I would appreciate all to heed my words in my other comment and stick to the corrections reporting. Thanks.Quoting: Liam DaweQuoting: SchattenspiegelHonestly, it's feeling like you're jumping in here to cause a fuss. The context there is perfectly clear, the person is named and then I used a possessive pronoun to show the twitter account in question belongs to them.QuoteSo that all sounds pretty reasonable, some nice games coming to Google's Linux-powered streaming service Stadia. Where did it go wrong then? Well, they're currently enjoying a serious round of bad press and Stadia ended up trending all across Twitter, and not for positive reasons.Who's twitter bio? Stadias or Hutchinsons?
The problem was Alex Hutchinson, who according to their Twitter bio was the "Creative Director for Google Stadia" that tweeted out these thoughts:
Quoting: TheSHEEEPor just write theyThat is what I did and what people are taking issue with.
If people choose to keep arguing over pronouns, we will lock the comments to clean things up and remove the people who keep doing it. Stop it. Arguments over it are not permitted, please read the rules. If something is unclear, use the corrections report function we made specifically for issues like this. There's a dedicated box for corrections below the article, and a dedicated button also on the comments box so you can use either. Thank you.
Sorry to hear you feel that way. You may have noticed that I originally used the correction box to avoid causing a fuss with remark about that, but since other readers stubbled over the same thing, I tied to explain the problem in more detail, in order to avoid confusion in the future. Should have stayed with the original idea of keeping it out of public comments. Apologies for that.
Nevertheless, if multiple people are having a problems understanding the meaning of your articles lately, then maybe you want to entertain the thought, that you did not express yourself as clearly as you thought.
Quoting: LinuxwarperThese circle-jerking and misinformation you mention are common on many platforms reddit subs. They're present on all their glory on PS/XBOX/PCMR/etc subs, I don't expect Stadia's sub to be any better. People like to say the dumbest things in favor of (or against for that matter) Stadia. Not much to worry about.Quoting: dubigrasuYep, more ammunition (as if it wasn't enough already) for Stadia detractors, I can see them buzzing with excitement for this new opportunity.Equally so for Stadia community. I've seen so very few if any posts on Stadia reddit about implication Stadia can have for local play. There is plenty circle jerk too in there and misinformation. Like how if you got a great connection Stadia will be good and no waiting, but the fact that a great connection would also significantly reduce the waiting period for local installation too. Or fact consoles have a "update in rest mode" function, which many consoles owners have not turned on. Then a Stadia supporter posts a picture of "X Download" for console and uses that to talk about how great Stadia is.
If Stadia community wants everyone on board they should strive to preserve peoples wishes; that is local play being an option. It does not mean Google needs to provide local releases, but their Stadia business should in no way affect local play on other platforms. But I bet you Google would not listen to such request. So for gamers you are either Stadia or not. More dividing of gamers. We had console and PC, now we have Stadia too.
It does suck though when some higher-up comes up with some dumb thing to say.
Quoting: jo3fisMaybe you need to calm down.Quoting: Purple Library GuyQuoting: jo3fisI haven't actually noticed anyone foaming at the mouth. You want everyone stoned out on laudanum or what?Quoting: einherjarAnd there the typical Internet Drama of these days is seen again (Twitter "outrage" etc.)
Calm down, he has an opinion and it is different from what the most people think about that topic. So what?
My thoughts exactly. Everyone needs to calm down.
Well that would be a welcome improvement for a lot of people 🤣
How can we deploy this on a mass scale?
Quoting: thoughtfulhippoWait, what? That Phoenix Point that dropped Linux because it "requires a large amount of specialised graphics programming" is now coming to Stadia? I'm guessing they still won't release for Linux. This makes me even more salty!
Things like that is why i dont give a shit to Stadia. Is running linux but for the companies, they are completely different platforms. Cases like Doom that was ported to Linux before it was ported to Stadia just so they could test the game shows that these companies wont invest on linux or anything.
Also, this game had a lot of controversy when launched because it was funded via kickstarter, then was released exclusively on Epic Store and when people complained, they stated that could give back all kickstarter money because the Epic check was worth it
ObsidianBlk Oct 26, 2020
Quoting: WJMazepasThings like that is why i dont give a shit to Stadia.
Why blame Stadia for this? The actions of Phoenix Point's developers is not Stadia's fault.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not a fan of Stadia, mostly for it's model and it being another service that erodes the consumer's concept of ownership.
None-the-less, for situations like this, it's not Stadia that's at fault, but the developers in either their singular ignorance or apathy when they clearly can port to Linux but refuse to. Any condemnation over Linux exclusion should be leveled purely at the developers, not the service which just happened to expose the developer's hypocrisy.
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