For The Love of Deepspace

Repeat after me:

Any abnormal behavior within the game is a degree of boycotting

I have to add my grain of salt because I am sick and tired of people using the boycott as a moral high ground to attack other players who are also interested in the exact same cause as you.

A boycott is not a switch you turn on and off. It’s not an all or nothing mentality. You it’s not white and black thing. Swing things in a binary is extremist way of thinking. You know what else is extremist way of thinking? Authoritarianism, conservatism, fascism. The kind of extremist behaviour that got Valko cancelled in the first place.

If you used to spend every month $50 in the game and now you’re spending $20? That IS a form of boycotting. If you’re spending $5? That IS a form of boycotting. If you’re not spending nothing at all, that’s a form of boycotting.

If you used to log in 2-3 or more times a day, and spend >3 hours in the game, and now you’re logging in once and staying for an hour? Thats boycotting. You only log once to get your dailies done? That’s boycotting. You’re not logging in at all? That’s boycotting!

Any abnormal activity within the game is a form of boycotting.

What’s the most important part of the boycott? Not spending money. The game faces its biggest loss by the decrease in money spent, logging in helps the game but sure as hell isn’t the same as spending $50, $100…its best not spending nothing at all on the game. But I’m no one’s mother to force them. I can only spread the awareness and ask for the help, whether they offer it that is no longer up to me.

Have a little empathy

To some people this game is still a sort of psychological clutch, to others doing dailies is a part of their routine.

Empathy is necessary because we are all fighting the same fight, but not all of us have the luxury to stop entirely all interactions with the game.

And I say luxury because

Playing this game at all is a luxury in and of itself,

Some people can’t afford to skip dailies

Some people paid a promise/ab Aureum/a yearly pass before all of this happened in the first place. Get your moneys worth back. You paid for it, you’re entitled to it.

What if someone who can’t afford to spend money other than an Aureum boycotted since the beginning and Valko comes back in, let’s say for example, September? They lost two months of resources. What if they want to pull for Valko and can’t afford to buy packs? Every. Resource. Counts.

All of this is coming from a low-mid spender in the game, I can afford spending money on this game occasionally without going as crazy as I would’ve liked. I have still been saving money, so when Valko drops I will be able to spend sm on him, but realistically speaking farming and holding back in banners that aren’t from my mains do wonders for my finances.

This is coming from someone (Caleb, Xavier, Sylus main) who saw his very first preview, that 45 second clip of him running in the woods and fell in love with him on the spot and thought I was gonna stop maining Xavier and Sylus to only focus on Valko. Spending my money on him and trying to rank as many of his cards as it’s financially possible to me.

Any and every abnormal behavior within the game is a for of boycotting.

If you’re using the boycott as means to shame other people also wanting Valko back, you’re attacking the very people who are standing by your side, rather than focusing on the main goal.

“But logging in and spending money won’t bring him back” we have not been making the numbers the game is used to making. They are a multi million company, do you really THINK they will settle down for the revenue the are making right now??? They went from making almost a billion last year to barely making 10M last month.

Second, we have no guarantee that it will bring him back either. We do know Infold is interested in bringing him back based on how they have behaved. No multi banner, rushing banners that should’ve come out later in the year like Caleb’s and Raf’s myth, stretching time between banners.

Infold has seen the amount of things we’ve been doing in this boycott. They are absolutely aware of the fight, the lengths is has gone to, and the money we could be spending in their pockets that we aren’t. They know better than anyone the true loss, both economically, and to their game quality wise.

So even when there’s a SMALL FRACTION of people spending, or people yielding to their main while still spending less money than what they could be spending, the vast majority of us are still doing the heavy work. But that’s not an excuse to be an asshole to the people helping you, because when you push people away, that’s when people stop believing in the cause and dropping the boycott altogether. A partial boycott is still better than no boycott at all. You don’t get to be mean to the people who are still quietly logging in and doing dailies because it’s their safest way to farm and pull once Valko gets back. A few cracks here and there will not tear down the fight. And if you think it will, it’s because you’re either pessimistic about this whole thing, or you don’t trust your community.

I am confident that we will have him back, I don’t know when, but so far Infold has been giving quiet signals that Valko is still on the table. Until I have received an official statement, I will keep boycotting. And I am confident that my friends logging in or even renovating their Aureum’s because they’re convenient for farming things with free retro will not tear down the boycott. Because I’ve seen how much these friends spend. And they really are holding back with everything they’ve got, and that effort is very well appreciated and I’m grateful for it.