Entitled gamer

"Honestly the biggest reason we didn't do a Kickstarter is we didn't want to deal with entitled baby gamers holding even more power over us."
—Glumberland, developer of Ooblets

The entitled gamer or gamer entitlement is a term used by game journalists and anti-gamers to dismiss criticism from gamers and silence them.

Known examples

• The biggest example was with Mass Effect 3. While it was received very well by journalists, gamers complained about the lack of polish and very poor ending of the game. A petition was issued to fix the ending along with a charity drive that raised $80,000. EA created a DLC to change the ending, but IGN, who had ran massive advertisement campaigns for the game, sided against gamers, calling them "entitled" and saying they were compromising the developer's creative freedom, even though it was obvious the ending was heavily rushed. IGN also encouraged on-disc DLC, equating the complaints about on-disc DLC to starving the developers. When the ending to Mass Effect 3 was finally changed, many journalists protested the change on social media, not only booing gamers but also BioWare for "giving into the fans." Alex Navarro, a writer for Giant Bomb, said the ending to ME3 should have been General Shepard giving the finger to gamers.

• When fans of Devil May Cry showed disappointment to the reboot made by Ninja Theory called DmC: Devil May Cry, VG247 said the fans were a "crying shame."

• Nearly every disliked behavior in the industry such as always online-DRM has been defended by journalists, even though gamers found it unacceptable. Diablo 3 was, for a while, unplayable because of the DRM. The criticism gamers made were dismissed with some journalists telling them to shut up.

• Despite positive reviews, Dragon Age II was heavily disliked among gamers for its reused assets and poor writing. The criticisms for the game were framed up as a misogynist attack against BioWare writer Jennifer Hepler by articles on Polygon, Gamespot and Kotaku.

• After Phil Fish cancelled Fez 2 and told fans they don't deserve it, one of his fans told him that "Saying the fans and people who got you to a million Fez sales don't deserve a sequel is idiotic!" In response to this, Fish simply had the following to say to the person in question: "Entitled gamer, much?"

• During Blizzcon 2018, Diablo: Immortal was introduced, and fans of the series were less than pleased due to it being a mobile game and that it would likely contain loot boxes and microtransactions. The announcement trailers have also been hit with heavy downvotes. Of course, Pat the NES Punk and corrupt journalists sided with Blizzard and said that gamers were entitled to nothing.

• When Glumberland, the developers of the indie game Ooblets, announced the PC version of their game was going to be an Epic Games Store exclusive, they made a blogpost explaining why they did it but with a snarky condescending tone. On their Discord, they frequently insulted gamers using the "entitled" term. For instance, when a user asked what gamers would have to do when Epic Games Store couldn't support their currency, one of the developers stated, "You'll have to wait I guess! Nobody owes you the game!" It's even implied they have little to no respect for their previous backers on Patreon as they stated they didn't need Patreon anymore now that they had EGS's money. Even worse, corrupt journalists and Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeny praised Glumberland for their decision of making it an Epic Games Store exclusive!
  • Another example is when Metro Exodus got into some hot water after the game became an Epic Games exclusive; a YouTuber named HippoZoned made a rant on PC gamers, calling them "entitled spoiled brats". This video was met with such serious backlash from PC players that he deleted his channel (and the video along with it) after another YouTuber named Griffin Gaming made fun of the video.
  • Fortunately, on October 5, 2023, Glumberland finally caved in and released the PC version of Ooblets on Steam.

• In 2014, the entitled gamer argument hit a new low with the "Gamers Are Dead" articles, which helped in escalating the consumer revolt known as GamerGate.

• Whenever an online/live-service game launches either full of bugs or with barely any content and players are angered by it, some will try to say "Gamers are so entitled they can't wait for updates" as a cheap excuse to justify said game even when it's obviously not ready for release. Sometimes the game is never fixed, and even when the game gets updates, most of the time all the updates do is patch in the content that should've been there at launch.
• James Batchelor, a writer from gamesindustry.biz, decried gamers as "unreasonable" (and yes, he did use the accursed "entitled gamer" term in the article) in a smear piece he wrote after Ubisoft decided to reverse their decision to censor part of Rainbow Six: Siege to cater to the Chinese market due to negative feedback.
• When asked by a fan if the PC version of Borderlands 3 would be an Epic Games Store exclusive, Gearbox Software CEO Randy Pitchford says yes because, according to him, "gamers don't care where they buy games from." This obviously lead to heavy backlash from Borderlands fans to the point where they review bombed the older Borderlands entries on Steam, complaining about the EGS exclusivity (even though review bombing's not the right way to go about). In response to this, Pitchford threatened Valve, the company that made Gearbox what they are today, to silence gamers, while accusing them (Valve) for not doing anything to counteract the review bombing. And when told by gamers that it's partially his fault that he started this controversy, Pitchford shamelessly attempted to play victim.
  • The worst part about this is that he's happy about making a decision of making it an EGS-exclusive. But thankfully, it came out on Steam on March 13, 2020.
  • Also, when Borderlands 2 fans complained on Twitter that one of the weapons, The Bee, will get nerfed in a 1.2.0 patch update, Pitchford responded by insulting his fanbase and calling them "e-terrorists" as a way of using the "entitled gamer" term.

Why This Term Sucks

1. Most people who use it refuse to accept criticism of the games they review.
2. It is also used to justify shady and greedy practices.
3. This excuse goes to show how corrupted game journalism can be.
4. Most people who use it also say this because of briberies.
5. Some even supported the Epic Games Store, despite the negative reception from PC gamers.

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