Inability to take criticism
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All of this just works. ― Todd Howard |
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Disclaimer: We do not support any harassment against anyone as this will make it worse. Also just because they do that behavior doesn't automatically make them pure evil/heinous. That only makes them more human like the rest of us. After all, nobody's perfect.
In films, TV shows and games, they usually shouldn't be expected to be masterpieces all the time because a filmmaker or game developer made some mistakes over many years. But regardless of quality, no filmmaker and game developer, being either a professional or an "amateur", is supposed to be immune to negative criticism, especially if the film or game is being sold for real money and sold on major platforms like Disney+, Crunchyroll, Netflix, Steam, Origin, or in theatres and stores.
In recent years, not only have some indie filmmakers and game developer shown their hostilities against criticism, but some larger studios or the directors a with high budgets have also attempted to silence negative reception.
The Situation
While it is understandable that people don't like receiving negative criticism, it usually is not meant as an attack against the product or the developer and director. Negative criticism is meant to inform audiences and consumers about a poor-quality product and to help directors, developers, screenwriters, or producers understand the issues with their product. However, some creators see negative criticism as a threat to either their business or to their fragile, overinflated egos and will do anything to try to stop said criticism.
Likewise, not everyone on the internet knows that constructive criticism needs to be constructive and instead mock the film, the director(s), the writers, and sometimes, even people who like the film they are "criticizing". It's very easy to be a target of this type of critic, especially on Metacritic, which generally lacks quality control for reviews. Being a target of bad critics or trolling, however, does not excuse toxic behavior (see examples below).
Silencing Criticism
When these filmmakers and developers receive negative criticism of their work, they usually either respond by censorship, attacking the critic under the excuse that they are hurting their business, sending threats, or whining and calling it "harassment". Some of them may even go far as to dox, assault, or swat people who criticize their product, although stuff like this is thankfully uncommon.
YouTube
When it comes to YouTube videos, they will often resort to filing frivolous DMCA takedowns on them, under the unsubstantiated excuse of "copyright infringement". This is particularly dangerous as the YouTuber in question is at risk of getting removed from the platform after three DMCA takedowns.
Not only are film and game reviews protected under Fair Use, but it should also be noted that filing a false DMCA is a crime. Thankfully they usually fail and the target only ends up getting called out on it by big-time YouTubers and other people whose messages reach as many people as possible.
Steam
The Direct system currently makes it too easy to release games and Valve themselves does very little to monitor the community, something that was not fixed from the former Greenlight system. As of late, Valve has taken more action against toxic developers who act abusive or break Steam's rules. In April 2017, Valve had a meeting with YouTubers Jim Sterling and TotalBiscuit regarding the future of Steam. In the meeting, Valve confirmed that they indeed keep an archive of every single deleted comment and evidence of hostile behaviour.
Notable Examples
Film and TV
- Paul Feig and Melissa McCarthy: Accused haters of Ghostbusters (2016) of being misogynistic towards the cast.
- Elizabeth Banks: She blamed men for the failure of Charlie's Angels (2019): "If this movie doesn't make money it reinforces a stereotype in Hollywood that men don't go see women do action movies". When it was pointed out that Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel were big hits, she said that they didn’t count because they were part of a larger scope of films.
- Raye Rodriguez: While not as bad as the one above he tried to excuse the bad writing by saying his show High Guardian Spice is like this due to low budget, to the point that he regrets creating that.
- Maïmouna Doucouré: Gave poor reasons for defending her film Cuties as a promotion of feminism, diversity, and presenting how Senegalese and French culture is like when it isn't. Like Paul Feig and Elizabeth Banks, not only does she accused the haters as misogynistic but also calls them racist and sexist when the film is had scenes of sexualizing children in reality. In other words, her justifications are already thrown out of the window.
- Derek Savage: Has harassed I Hate Everything from his negative review of Cool Cat Saves the Kids (despite IHE liking the film ironically).
- Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic: Made episodes of Teen Titans Go! specifically to jab at criticism, as well as fans of the original series, such as "Let’s Get Serious", "The Return of Slade" and "Teen Titans Roar!".
- Uwe Boll: Challenged his critics to a boxing match.
- Vincent Gallo: Got into a feud with Roger Ebert after Ebert called Gallo's film The Brown Bunny the worst film he'd ever seen at The Cannes Film Festival.
- Kevin Smith: When Jersey Girl got negative reviews, he claimed that the film wasn't meant for critics. When Cop Out got negative reviews, he lashed out on Twitter, comparing it to bullying a retarded kid. And when Masters of the Universe: Revelation got a lot of negative reviews from He-Man fans, he told them to "grow up" without addressing any of the show's problems.
- Seth Rogen and Sarah Silverman: They respectively called people who didn't like Santa Inc. "white supremecists" and "anti-Semitics".
- Matthew Graham: When his Doctor Who episode "Fear Her" got a negative reaction from the fandom, he responded that children liked it more than adults and that it wasn't made for the latter.
- Kirk Cameron: He urged people to review bomb Rotten Tomatoes in response to Saving Christmas' negative reaction.
- Robert Orci: In response to a negative review of Star Trek Into Darkness, he replied that there's a reason he gets paid to make movies and the critics don't.
- Brie Larson: She hit back at critics who hated A Wrinkle in Time (which she had no involvement with), calling them old white men and that it wasn't made for them.
- Rob Schneider: He insulted LA Times critic Patrick Goldstein for giving Deuce Bigalow, European Gigolo, saying that he wasn't qualified to review the film because he hadn't won the Pulitzer Prize.
- Nick Swardson: He blamed the failure of Buck Larson: Born to Be a Star on the critics. "I knew the critics were going to bury us because of the acting, how it was written and directed ... None of those reviewers was psyched to see Bucky Larson and laugh. They go in with the mentality 'fuck these guys for making another movie.' They go in there to kind of headhunt. It makes me laugh because it's just so embarrassing. It makes them look like such morons."
- Damon Lindelof: When fans of Lost criticized season six for having too much filler, he told fans on Twitter to go and watch NCIS if they didn't like it.
- Zack Snyder: When questioned about having Batman kill in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, he responded by saying that fans who were still under the misconception that Batman and Superman don't kill are "living in a dreamland" and need to "wake the fuck up."
- Finn Jones: Defended the first season of Iron Fist against critics, saying that critics don't "get it" and that the show isn't made for them, but for the fans. He even went so far as to blame Donald Trump due to his superficial similarity to Danny Rand.
- Dean Devlin: He aggressively defended Godzilla (1998) on internet message boards, at times telling the Godzilla fans "to hell with you" if they had a negative opinion over it.
- Jason DeRulo: He defended Cats against critics, calling it "one of the greatest pieces of art ever made," and declared that the only people who should be allowed to give opinions on movies are filmmakers themselves.
- Francis Ford Coppola: He calls out critics for giving his epic sci-fi drama Megalopolis mixed reviews. Even went as far as saying this when people called out the toxic production of Megalopolis; "What the studios do today is make Coca-Cola. They know there’s a good chance they’ll make money, providing the flavour stays the same".
- Alex Kurtzman: Called out critics who gave The Mummy from Universal's Dark Universe as he said "I don't make movies for them"
Video Games
- Killing Day Studio: One of the first instances of indie developers trying to hide complaints. They deleted various comments from buyers of their scam game Earth: Year 2066 and even renamed their community forums.
- Wild Games Studio: One of the first incidents of filing fraudulent DMCA takedowns, was when TotalBiscuit gave their game, Day One: Garry's Incident, a negative review. Not only that, but they were also accused of using astroturfing to post bogus reviews on Metacritic.
- Digital Homicide Studios: Their attempts to silence critics escalated to them literally filing frivolous lawsuits against people who said anything even remotely negative about them. They had even threatened to sue Valve, which resulted in Valve banning them from Steam and the company subsequently going out of business.
- Killjoy Games: When their terrible game, Air Control, was panned, they tried to blame the players, shamelessly claiming that all the complaints are the result of trying to run the game on outdated hardware. They even said that Air Control was supposed to only be played at 1920x1080p despite it clearly being a very basic Unity game almost all 2000s computers can run. Trying to get away from the game's backlash, they used a sockpuppet account to release their second game, Zen Fish Sim.
- STICLI Games: When they released their game, Airport Master, they put clauses on their End User License Agreement that said people couldn't make videos about the game without their permission and that gamers were not allowed to get refunds. Neither claim can actually be enforced and the latter is a direct violation of Steam's Terms of Use. They also filed a Trademark violation claim against Jim Sterling's own video, which is worse than a DMCA.
- Tale of Tales: When their game, Sunset, became a commercial failure, the husband and wife team of Tale of Tales left the game industry, insulting both it and gamers in the process. They even started a Patreon account dedicated to bringing "an end to video games as we know it."
- Team6 Game Studios: When their game, FlatOut 3: Chaos & Destruction got a score of 1 out of 10 by Eurogamer, one of the team members of Team6 went on the game's Steam forums (which has long since been deleted, but archived via NeoGAF forums and Tom Branwell's Twitter posts) to claim that Eurogamer was playing with "a non-official and old version" of the game and that they weren't playing with update 4. Tom Branwell of Eurogamer stated that the update wouldn't have changed the game's score, and a Team6 team member proceeded to call the reviewer "a liar".
- Silicon Echo Studios: They used all the possible loopholes of Steam Direct to post over 170 asset flips at once. They have been also accused of trying to silence critics before Valve finally pulled them and their games out of Steam. It should be noted that Valve only pulled Silicon Echo out after a Steam group discovered and openly revealed the absurd amount of shovelware they were posting and insisted that they be removed, Valve did not take any action up until then.
- Krafton: PUBG's developer Krafton (then known as Bluehole) have gotten carried away by the success of their game and repeatedly threatened other developers who make battle royale games and made several statements that heavily implied that they want a full monopoly on the genre, even though they weren't the ones who created it. Krafton even filed a frivolous lawsuit against Epic Games, simply because PUBG lately has been losing a ton of players to Fortnite. The issue was resolved after Tencent (Epic Games' parent company) has taken over Krafton in 2019.
- Glumberland: Within a few days, the developer of Ooblets had the galls to call Kickstarter backers "entitled gamer babies", stole lots of money from their Patreon supporters and attacked anyone who criticized their Epic Store exclusivity.
- To make matters worse, corrupt game journalists and even Tim Sweeney, the founder and CEO of Epic Games defended Glumberland.
- Google: Although they're not indie developers, they reacted in the same manner as the aforementioned examples when their debut console, the Stadia, received very negative reviews due to its unreliability, bad optimization, horrible input lag, price, and game lineups. The company reacted to it by creating burner accounts (basically sockpuppet accounts for companies) to defend the Stadia.
- Grove Street Games: An indie game company notorious for their work on the Xbox 360/PS3 version of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and the recent Definitive Edition of the Grand Theft Auto Trilogy. Because of that, gamers always criticise the company for that. GSG always responds by blocking anyone who criticises them in any sort of way on Twitter, whether it's related to GTA or the company themselves.
- Superprism: A developer publishing gacha games, offered extra rewards (gems, currency) on their game Kingsense if the Google Play Store ratings were boosted all the way up to 5 stars, which at the time, were 3 stars with many more than normal 1 star ratings. This, resulted in massive scrutiny in the gacha gaming community, but eventually they thankfully cancelled it. It sounded like they were unable to take their negative Play Store ratings and wanted to push them back up by encouraging it. The game later announced shutdown in only 5 months, where it was later discovered that Kingsense was a publishing job of a Japanese gacha game that was already on life support, which meant no matter what Superprism did, it didn't change the fact that said gacha already failed in both Japan and China to begin with.
- Electronic Arts: They refuse to listen to players who want better gameplay or an improved Franchise Mode on Madden NFL. The same rule applies in FIFA, NHL, and EA Sports UFC as most of the efforts goes to microtransactions such as Ultimate Team, and almost any other studio that follows EA Sports' business practices.
- When the #NFLDropEA hashtag was trending on Twitter (as Madden NFL 21 was the worst-received game in the franchise), EA ignored the complaints. Clint Oldenburg, a former NFL backup who is the head gameplay developer of Madden NFL, cannot handle criticism and has blocked users on Twitter.
- Activision Blizzard: During the exposure of their sexual allegations, it was reported that they once tried (and thankfully failed) to buy gaming journalist media to avoid bad reviews.
- They also threatened employees who posted about the lawsuit.
- They also blamed Call of Duty: Vanguard's disappointing sales on World War II.
- Take-Two Interactive: They banned people for criticizing them, and also hacked their systems to remove issues. When the company was criticized for sending goons over to intimidate SupMatto, they forced the cast of Borderlands 3 to mock people for disagreeing with their actions.
- Atari: While promoting RollerCoaster Tycoon World, they stole fan art of the game and used it as their "official art" and called those who pointed out about this trolls.
- Some mobile game developers usually release their games through early access in order to avoid negative reception. Although they don't try to silence critics, they actually try to overshadow them with fake reviews by either bots or sockpuppet accounts. Some, on the other side, have the audacity to kindly ask the critics why they gave their games a low rating, and even go as far as to say that they could've improved the game if they received high ratings.
Why This Practice Sucks
- The major problem with this practice is if they can't take criticism, this can not only damage their reputation as a filmmaker as people will turn against them, but it would also show that they don't care about working in the entertainment industry ironically.
- They want you to believe that you're in the right by attacking people criticizing your project, even though this isn't exactly true since doing so doesn't help you as a person.
- They may also try to play the victim card to blame others for failing with the examples of Paul Feig and Elizabeth Banks shown on the examples list.
- They may uses excuses as shown here:
- "It's made for kids." (the most common excuse)
- "We don't have enough budget." (not as common)
- "It's nature."
- "If you don't like it don't watch."
- "If you hate that your (insert type of discrimination here)."
- "It's not made for you"
- In cases like using DMCA takedowns, you can get arrested if you attempt to do that.
- They may even go as far as to blackmail, threaten, or dox people just for panning their films.
- This plays the major factor why the American film & TV industry as whole went downhill.