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  • Here's one nobody has mentioned yet. Hasbro. Owner of Wizards of the Coast which recently tried to massively fuck over D&D players and sent hired mercinaries (literally Pinkertons) after one of their Magic: The Gathering players for something that totally wasn't the player's fault.

    • This sounds insane, can you provide more context?

      • So, D&D first. WotC back in 2001 realized something. There are a few books that they sell a ton of copies of and make a lot of money off of. (The Player's Handbook, The Dungeon Master's Guide, Monster Manual, etc.) And then there are a ton more books that take a lot of effort to make but that they don't sell many copies of so they don't really make much money on them, but they still have to be made in order to ensure that the more profitable books sell. (These are mostly the published adentures.)

        They figured that it would be in their best interest to incentivize third parties to write a lot of these published adventures so that WotC itself could focus more on the core books. So they licensed a lot of their core content under a license (The "Open Gaming License version 1.0a" or "OGL 1.0a") that allowed third parties to use it in their own modules and sell those modules. It created a vibrant ecosystem of publishers.

        The OGL 1.0a was intended as a perpetual license. They promised third party publishers that the wording of the license didn't allow WotC themselves -- creators of the OGL 1.0a -- to revoke the license. (This was on an official FAQ on WotC's site.) So you'd be able to sell your module that included verbiage and elements from official D&D materials forever.

        Well, in 2022, they changed their tune. They created an "OGL 1.1" (which was not "open" the way the 1.0a was) and started pressuring publishers they partnered with to accept the new license. It basically allowed them to rip off any third party content and include it in official WotC stuff without paying the third party publisher and also ban the publisher from using the material they wrote. It also put ridiculous restrictions on virtual tabletop software (software for playing D&D remotely.) Now, that's not so catastrophic because they couldn't revoke the OGL 1.0a and publishers were under no obligation to accept the OGL 1.1, right?

        Well, they came up with a legal argument why the language of the OGL 1.0a that they'd been telling everyone couldn't be revoked on existing works actually was something they could revoke. Basically, if they convinced a court they could do that, every third-party D&D module that relied on the OGL 1.0a would have to accept the OGL 1.1 terms that would let WotC rip off their work or stop sales immediately.

        There was massive backlash from the community. D&D players were remarkably unified in their response. And the CEO of WotC was really tone deaf and dismissive and soured WotC's relationship with the D&D community even further. Enough subscriptions to D&D Beyond (an online service owned by WotC) that shareholders started asking tough questions at shareholder meetings.

        So, finally, WotC hired a slick PR firm to smooth things out. And, honestly, I have to admit they did good. They ended up leaving the OGL 1.0a in place (unrevoked it, sorta). But also, WotC had already said "actually, we can revoke it" and nobody trusted the OGL 1.0a any more. So WotC also dual-licensing the same OGL-1.0a-licensed content also under a Creative Commons license that is (more certain to be) unrevokable and is more open than the OGL 1.0a. The upcoming version of D&D will be OGL 1.1 only, but players and third party publishers are pretty unified on the idea of refusing to migrate to the new version and the current version is safer from the evil clutches of WotC than it was before this whole fiasco went down.

        Now, the consensus among the D&D players is that WotC isn't the bad guys so much as Hasbro, WotC's parent company. When WotC backpeddeled and did the dual licensing thing, I decided to end my boycott of Hasbro. (I was actually DM'ing a D&D campaign at the time.) I looked forward to buying more D&D books. To seeing the latest Transformers movie and the D&D movie. Stuff like that.

        And then, very shortly after that all went down, there was the other fiasco started by WotC.

        I'm a little less familiar with this one, but some player of Magic: The Gathering purchased packs of MTG cards from a small reseller and the reseller fucked up. The reseller, not knowing the difference, gave the customer packs of a not yet released but similarly-named line of cards that weren't supposed to be available to customers at all yet.

        The customer made an unboxing video of these not-yet-officially-released cards and stuck it on YouTube. And that's when shit hit the fan. WotC could have DM'd the customer on YouTube and asked if the customer could take down the video and exchange the cards for the ones he'd actually purchased, but instead they sent the actual, literal Pinkertons (a private security/mercinary company known for union busting and lots of illegal quasi-military/quasi-police actions against innocent people) to go harass the customer's neighbors and intimidate (like while sporting assault rifles and body armor and camo -- on the customer's front porch) and bully the customer.

        Now, my understanding is that the customer did nothing legally wrong. The fuck up was the reseller's. The customer was under no legal obligation to return the cards or take down the video or otherwise cooperate in any way. The customer also said in later videos about the whole situation and the visit he got from the Pinkertons that they would totally have fully cooperated if they'd have just contacted him and asked.

        As soon as I heard about WotC sending the Pinkertons after a customer, I recommitted to boycotting Hasbro and I intend never to end that boycott. I really didn't expect something far worse to follow right on the heels of the OGL 1.1 fiasco.

      • They accidentally sent a notable player (dont remember if they were a content creator or something) an unreleased card. Pinkyboys showed up at his house and harassed him to return it.

  • Blizzard

    Back when they implemented Real ID and forced people to provide real namr and identification for playing the games they paid for, these motherfuckers locked me out of my account for account sharing because someone logged in from another country. That was me, logging in for my lunch break at work, about 1 hour away from home. They demanded I not only gave them my real name, but even send a copy of my passport to them by email. Obviously I refused. I had the original box and the game code, but they didn't care. There were no other fraud indicators. Just me logging in from work and using a pseudonym. I never got any of my games back. Fuck them

  • Google, should be self explanatory, but for me specifically for pretty much making YouTube worse with every change they make since that's the only service of them I still use. And I'm not going to also pay them to sell my data.

    Epic Games, for continuously fucking over Linux players and Unreal fans (and well players in general but specifically those two groups).

    • Google went from do no evil to, be as evil to customers as we can. Also we offer no support by phone or anything. Go ‘duck’ yourselves consumers!

      • This one was heartbreaking. I was a big Google fan from the moment I discovered them in 2002. They've done a fantastic job of pissing away all that goodwill in recent years.

  • Goya. It's easy to forget amidst the tsunami of far more severe bullshit between 2016 and 2020, but when Trump abused his authority to hawk a fucking bean advertisement in the oval office instead of leading the country during a pandemic... yeah, decided I'd never buy a Goya product again, ever.

  • Bank of America. I have dealt with them on a corporate level, multimillion dollar assets, mind you, and seen gross incompetence and negligence that scared me. I'm talking about constant insecure data practices, inconsistent rules, terrible record keeping, and asset mismanagement.

    The biggest weakness appeared to be how they treated their employees. Our "local branch" went through multiple managers in less than a year, and when we did business with the "employees du jour" in our quarterly meetings, they all acted like scared college students. Unprepared, inexperienced, and some cocksure with blatantly wrong information. And some downright unprofessional. For example, we had a meeting where they kept pronouncing our company name wrong, spelled our name wrong a different way, and kept adding parts to it. Like:

    "Okay, as president of Reginald Incorporated--"

    "Remington. Like the gun."

    "Regingun international - -

    "No no. REM MING TON. Remington."

    "Right. Remington International - -

    "Incorporated. There is no 'international' in our name."

    "But you're a Japanese company?"

    "No. We're American. We do business with the Japanese."

    "Oh. Huh. Okay, as president of Remington Incorporated of Japan - -"

    "NO. Just 'Remington Incorporated.' That's it."

    "Oh wow. Sorry. I'm going to have to fix that on this paperwork, then."

    "Yes. That's why we're here."

    • EA – killed Earth and Beyond just so they could use the servers for Sims Online
    • Blizzard – trust thermocline for me was Blitzcheung and the “We’re sorry you’re upset” excuse for an apology

  • Anything poisoned by the hand of Elon Musk. I loved Twitter ten years ago... now it's a toy for a vain, self-consumed fool, a stupid child allowed to play with power tools. I deleted my accounts months ago and studiously avoid visiting the site, or any links leading to that site. It fills my mouth with bile just thinking about what it's become.

  • Easyjet. They sent us an update in their app saying they delayed our flight a few hours due to ill pilot. We were waiting near the gate (nearest cafe) but not quite within view, and no flight boards nearby. They decided not to delay after all but did not send an update to the app, and nothing over loudspeakers. My paranoia got the better of me so i wandered down to the gate around the original time of flight to take a look. When I saw they were boarding after all i called the family down, but we had missed it by a minute or so. They would not let us board. They preferred to delay the flight while they unloaded our baggage. We had to pay for and book with another airline to arrive at our hotel at midnight losing a day of our Greek Island holiday. When we complained to their service desk, they refused to refund us, and said "we DO suggest you always keep up to date by watching the flight boards". There was a giant sign by their desk that literally said "download our app to keep up to date on your flights". I will never give those fucks another dollar, and I tell this story to anyone who will listen.

    • They preferred to delay the flight while they unloaded our baggage

      Thats the part that would have me launched to the moon on a red hot rage rocket.

      Cant take 30 seconds to let me board because your shitty fucking service told me it was delayed? But you'll delay the plane 20 minutes to dig my baggage out of the hold and make everyone elses day on board miserable?

      What kind of United Airlines level of pure customer hatred is that?!

  • All of those shitty Big Tech companies including Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle and many others, all corporate Social Media platforms (including Reddit of course, fuck Spez), those shitty Hollywood media corporations, CDNs like Cloudflare or Akamai, Tesla and everything related to Elon Musk, Starbucks, basically all fast food chains, every Chinese or Russian company, every Israeli company, The Coca-Cola Company, PepsiCo, Nestle and many others. I also try to stay away from PayPal, banks and insurance companies as much as possible, they are criminals.

    We shouldn't just focus on shitty companies. Foundations like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are basically tax-exempt billionaire investment funds in disguise. This is a great video about the lies of billionaire philanthropy: https://youtube.com/watch?v=OH4uh8cHuto

    • Sounds like you’re left with almost no modern conveniences or technology. I don’t mean this disparagingly, but I am curious how you live your life and ensure you are truly not using any of these companies or their subsidiaries, or even those shitlist companies if they are a white box supplier of someone else not on your list. Or even if a mom and pop shop down the street is using technologies, software, or appliances from one of these companies to run their local business…

      Doesn’t seem possible in reality. Or at the very least seems like a full time job that would get really futile after a while.

      • Sounds like you’re left with almost no modern conveniences or technology.

        You are right, I forgot one exception. I do use a Google Phone because these have the best support for alternative operating systems. I replaced the Stock Android which is filled with Google spyware with GrapheneOS, an entirely open-source version of Android which makes many privacy and security improvements and gets rid of any Google services. Watch this video to learn more about it: https://piped.smnz.de/watch?v=yTeAFoQnQPo

        On my laptops/computers, I exclusively use Linux. I refuse to touch any bloated, ad- and spyware-infested Windows computer. Yes, even at work. As a DevSecOps and Senior Linux engineer, I am free to choose whatever operating system I want. Free and open-source software is the way to go.

        I use Firefox (LibreWolf, a better version of Firefox to be percise) with DuckDuckGo as my search engine, I watch YouTube videos through Piped, I use Signal as my messenger, I use Proton for Email, I self-host Nextcloud for my files, contacts, calenders, etc.

        For entertainment, I simply pirate the content which gives me much more freedom compared to shitty streaming services like Netflix. That way, I also don't have to give these shitty corporations any money. I use the open-source Jellyfin media server to consume content from my media library. I do the same thing using Navidrome for my music.

        Regarding Social Media, Lemmy is probably the only thing I use. I don't need Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or TikTok.

        And the list goes on and on. I could write an entire book about avoiding proprietary software and shitty corporations.

        ensure you are truly not using any of these companies or their subsidiaries

        I do everything in my control to avoid it. I can't 100% guarantee it, but that's also not my goal. Not giving them my money or my data is enough for me.

        Or even if a mom and pop shop down the street is using technologies, software, or appliances from one of these companies to run their local business…

        Well, that's out of my control.

      • As someone who attempts to do the same, you're right, it's not possible to completely avoid doing business with these companies. But, I still make an effort to avoid them, I won't give up and start buying directly from Amazon's site, just because I can't avoid them 100%. Nothing is black and white, we all live in the gray zones.

  • EA, Ubisoft, ActiBlizz. All for their various flavours of greedy nasty and/or sexual abuse. Bethesda is honestly likely to go on the list soon as well.

290 comments