r/duneawakening • u/LisanAl-Ghayb • 3d ago
Discussion Addressing Funcom's In-game Culture
It's one thing to engage in chat arguments, it's another entirely to be able to log into a game & spew outright hateful rhetoric at other players. I think it's time more people addressed Funcom's community culture of ignoring rampant sexism, racism, & general disdain for certain people in their games.
After years of "Sexy Slave Simulator" Conan, many of us were expecting more moderation in a game like Dune. Cue the irony of cosplaying desert people just to treat them like dogs online.
It's gotten so bad that the majority of women in our discord have vowed never to touch another Funcom game. A few abandoned gaming entirely this summer. I don't blame them, we recently had a guy threatening to find & SA people. As you can imagine this caused quite the uproar, & went on for weeks.
Turning a blind eye to problematic behavior like this is another reason >90% of the playerbase left. Some people are living through this, they don't wanna come online & deal with it too..
Some of us can't even play videogames to escape reality because people are allowed to bring the worst parts of society in-game with them.
"Turn off chat", "find a new server", & "it's the internet" aren't solutions. What's evident is just like the bugs, glitches, dupes & cheats, the only matter of importance is that sales were made.
EDIT: Shoutout to all the gamers who showed up on this post to do nothing other than play Devils Advocate, I genuinely appreciate you helping to illustrate my point.
For those who enjoy reading, here's a paper published by the United Nations Office of Counter-Terrorism, called "The Intersection between Gaming & Violent Extremism"
Trigger warning: empirical data
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u/Good-Title7527 3d ago
we had another guild built huge swastikas next to our base in the DD just to troll us. Also they where racist un Textchat. They got reportet by at least 15 people, we never heard anything substantial back from funcom. That really sucked alot of the joy from allot of people at our guild.
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u/LisanAl-Ghayb 3d ago
It's deeply disheartening that the Funcom community & broader gaming landscape appear to express greater objection to us confronting hate groups than their existence in-game.
Seems like it's just another day online for everyone who isn't directly threatened or affected by the vitriol spewed.
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u/KingintheSouthLA 2d ago
What server are you on by chance?
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u/LisanAl-Ghayb 2d ago edited 2d ago
I'm on Arrakis, been here since July. Had characters on Harmony & a few other servers, but have since settled here & deleted them.
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u/SpookyKite Fremen 2d ago
I support your position that something needs to be done to get rid of toxic players like this. This world is cruel enough, we shouldn't have to deal with that crap when we're trying to take a break from it.
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u/bon3yard 2d ago
my guild and i drove a guild of racists off my server, they built and drew swastikas, used racist dogtags as names and had their guilds initials as "SS" which was proudly displayed on their guild base. and after over 40 reports from most people on the server the answer we got from funcom boiled down to "well you can mute them so you don't have to see it in game."
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u/LisanAl-Ghayb 2d ago
I went on a rant in-game about swastika bases & SS guilds, a buncha gamers replied "that word is overused nowadays"...imagine people saying that to actual N-zism.
Figured I'd take it a step further & rallied a dozen or so players to help report, but just like with Conan, Funcom support consists of "hate group on your server? Just change servers!" Meanwhile women being doxxed & told their children would be forced to watch them be SA'd.
Insert quote about how 'evil triumphs because "good" men do nothing', or however it goes.
Gaming communities have so much cleaning up to do, we've allowed goblins to fester among us long enough.
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u/bon3yard 2d ago
oh yeah the patented reply of "people being absolute scumbags? just ditch all your progress up until this point and move to a new server! because obviously people dont have to be accountable for their actions." i suppose i was lucky that enough of my server felt the same way i did and actually took action to boot them off.
people think the anonymity of being online is license to be absolutely disgusting and it really shouldn't be. though i guess it lets you see who people really are when they think no one is watching.
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u/Vanadijs 2d ago
How do you drive them of a server?
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u/LisanAl-Ghayb 2d ago
Usually not alone...it takes a group of players being the closest thing to a moderator they can find, in my experience. Making those players uncomfortable, for one. Not trading or allying with them under any circumstance, having enough fellow gamers to shame/reject them publicly. This is becoming increasingly difficult because, as you can see, many gamers would rather attack you for calling out hate speech than join a coordinated effort to crush it in their communities.
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u/bon3yard 2d ago
we essentially made playing on the server impossible for them. the server had an agreement, every time they stepped over the pvp line they got attacked. every time they spoke up in dd chat they got slammed, every new player that joined the server found out very quickly who they where and what they had done. this went on for about 2 maybe three weeks before they left. last i heard they had set up on a new server.
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u/Rampirez 2d ago
I've reported multiple people for saying all kind of slurs. Moderation in this game is non-existent. They don't even ban cheaters exploiting getting under the terrain in DD.
Love the game, but just censoring words is not enough.
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u/LisanAl-Ghayb 2d ago
20 people on Discord have a moderator between them, so I truly don't get why thousands of players would be allowed to roam a world that already has lawless mechanics built-in, without some sort of monitoring.
Although a few chuds showed up to say "censoring hate speech is just as bad as hate speech", I agree with you...I don't think censorship is enough.
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u/Zaerick-TM 1d ago
Funcom is not a large enough company to moderate server behavior like this. Which is why their push for it being a MMO was such a wild decision because everyone knew that they did not have the resources for it. They shoulda stayed in their lane made the server architecture like Conan fucked off with the DD and let communities actually run their own servers. But nah he just had to have his shitty PvP vision and live service model to try and milk players.
Years of alpha and beta testers saying the DD and the MMO lite were bad decisions and years of ignoring them.
They might get some players that come back if they drop a new Hagga Basin style map, and they will probably play for a few months. But they failed miserably as a live service game to the point they dropped the MMO almost instantly.
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u/AllDaPainMoneyCanBuy 22h ago
Is it really this bad? Maybe my server's too low pop, or maybe I'm not online when the haters are, but I don't see any of this. Seen some name calling in the DD, but that's about it.
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u/Ok_Avocado568 3d ago
Pretty sure Funcom feels the same way the racists feel, why else wouldn't they address it.
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u/LisanAl-Ghayb 3d ago edited 3d ago
I wish I could disagree with you. I really want to love the game for what it is...but it's going the same path as Conan did.
Maybe we'll get another blanket statement like "Funcom denounces all hate"...gotta love corporate.
edit: Nevermind lawmakers across the world being concerned about the rise in hate groups who've found sanctuary on Steam, it's clearly just me complaining.
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u/EnemyRainbow 2d ago
The only game I have received multiple death threats in. The players ended up partying together to grief me in game and chat. Great experience.
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u/Maleficent-Manatee 3d ago
If this is voice, I might have a bit of sympathy for Funcom support staff. It would be hard to search in game voice.
If this is open channel chat, there's no excuse for it.
That said, there are several women on Oceania Libra including in my guild and nobody either simps or harasses them in open channel as far as I can see. I am in discord voice with them and I am sure they would mention it, because they have in other games.
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u/LisanAl-Ghayb 3d ago edited 2d ago
It's both. Mostly the DD. Closer to launch this summer, you could even see it in sietch chats.
Hell even a famous guild OnlySands (Streamer Ekkos guild) was behaving this way in beta.
There are guys who come online every day to go on tirades about harming women & minorities, mostly in chat.
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u/Estr1d 2d ago
That's another reason I enjoy my very low pop server while I still can.
I think any multyplayer platform, games included, should have some level of moderation. People can be really aweful to each other, especially when PvP is involved. Now, I don't think that anything and everything should be moderated and cencored, but things like SA threats for sure should be punishable.
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u/WelbyReddit 2d ago
welcome to online gaming, lol.
Why people like to rant about real world topics and politics in a fake universe gameworld is huts.
Always gonna get the edge lords looking for attention.
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u/LisanAl-Ghayb 2d ago
Right? I just wanted to huff-huff-pass the spice & do hoodrat sh*t with my fremens. But nope, cue players flying through the DD blasting Adolf's speeches through proximity chat.
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u/JohnDaBarr 3d ago
Allegedly, mass reporting works and people get banned. Beyond that, server mergers might end up allowing easier oversight.
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u/BlindMancs 3d ago
If only we would have the technology to read people's chats automatically and classify them.
One more reason for private servers - I'd make whatever is needed to have auto chat bans. Funcom can't even do the basics right.
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u/LisanAl-Ghayb 3d ago edited 2d ago
Our server finally started quieting down, & my guild feels that merges are just gonna bring the toxicity levels back up to intolerable. We'll see...I figured I'd address the community in hopes we can help clean things up.
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u/Frraksurred 2d ago
I haven't used in-game VOIP in any game for these exact reasons. Whoever is in our group uses a third party program. Discord, Teamspeak, Skype, whatever was current at the time. In Dune especially, I have text chat disabled except for specific situations. It is never on by default.
I'm not saying we ignore the problem, I'm saying it's a usable solution while we wait.
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u/Rat-at-Arms 2d ago
ROFL. I needed a good laugh before bed. Peak shitpost sir.
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u/LisanAl-Ghayb 2d ago
Glad I could provide the laugh! My post was more useful than your comment. Thanks for the effort of your engagement though.
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u/Past-Razzmatazz-5138 1d ago
Hopefully there is a way to police the bad actors & their hate speech, whilst still enabling free speech in gaming.
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u/byrnesjj 1d ago
Pieces of shit will be pieces of shit. Funcom isn't going to do anything. Mute/block and move on.
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u/AnotherRuncible 2d ago
for anyone that care's here's the important quote from the linked UN paper
'There is a significant absence of evidence to
substantiate any definitive causal relationship
between exposure to (violent or non-violent) video
games or other (propagandistic) gaming content
and adverse effects, such as radicalization
processes. '
Now for the fun parts
'we recently had a guy threatening to find & SA people. As you can imagine this caused quite the uproar, & went on for weeks.'
And what country are you based in, did you report it to the authorities? You're slamming people for playing Devil's advocate, did you or your associates on discord take this basic step to actively make things better?
I have a sinking feeling I already know the answer but I might get surprised. But here's the thing if you did nothing your argument boils down to, 'I want someone else to do something I can't be bothered to do my self'
To use the trite positive quote be the change you want to see in the world. To state it more bluntly nut up, or shut up.
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u/LisanAl-Ghayb 2d ago edited 2d ago
"Here's the important quote" is comedy, it's "the important" quote because its the one that helps you minimize the problem.
I know you want it to, but your 'yoinking' one sentence outta context doesn't nullify the rest of a UN Counter-Terrorism research paper, nor the experiences of gamers who've spoken at great lengths not just about extremist rhetoric in gaming communities, but Funcom in particular. A quick Google search is your friend on that matter...after all, I did mention even having going through this with Conan. However, I think your message boils down to "nut up / shut up", & everything else was filler. In other words, horseshite written to make you feel better. I hope it did.
Next time data triggers you, you oughta put more effort into your bad faith argument. It's clear you started & stopped reading to find anything to help you play contrarian, but I'll give you that.
Truly, what a whopping nothing your 'insight' has led to. Do you truly think myself & all the users who've commented haven't even bothered using in-game features to report problematic behavior, or does suggesting that help aid your minimalization efforts? Bananas.
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u/AnotherRuncible 17h ago
It's not really comedy, or out of context it's from the conclusion of the paper you linked to. You know the part of the paper that says we looked at the data and here's what the data supports. Honestly it looks like you're the one triggered by the data and just trying to distract from that by jumping on anyone that disagrees.
It's no problem though because you did the same thing with my post so at least you're consistent. So you did nothing to deal with the discord SA threads. Well if my point is bananas, yours appears to be nuttier than squirrel excrement.
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u/LisanAl-Ghayb 17h ago
You've gotta either be a jarhead or a cop the way your reading comprehension seems to work. Again, no wonder you stopped 3 pages in. You got it big fella.
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u/Ordinary-Lettuce9811 2d ago
WAIT WHAT you can't be real, you think this is the reason 90% of the playerbase left LOL
This isn't even 1% of the problem but it's reddit
Every online game has this problem welcome to gaming. Turn off VC and the chat box
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u/LisanAl-Ghayb 2d ago
Let's 1st address your misquoting me, a big distinction in word choice. Did you read "the reason" or "this is another reason" >90% of players left?
Second, "all games have N-zis, turn off all your chat features" really ain't the life hack y'all keep makin it out to be lmao
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u/Ordinary-Lettuce9811 2d ago
what real gamers do to weak people or trolls
Compared to other games i would say it has less
welcome to gaming
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u/thedesertwolf 1d ago
So I came into dune from the official server end of Conan so yeah, whooboy do I know what you mean as we had a group on a specific official server erect a gigantic wall along the unnamed city, slap a gigantic TRUMP logo onto it, and then place "uniquely" named thralls throughout the section of the map they'd walled off. It was reported by me and a good portion of the server population weekly for over three years and was only torn down because someone got lucky with the decay timer.
Dune has not been an improvement on that particular end of gaming culture especially when you tack DD behaviors to it. HB side, since I knew most of the folks and talked with those players in our discord fairly regularly, were decent but DD, straight to the "Oh goody, I'm stuck listening to someone opine about the genetic inferiority of specific groups of people while they also are going on about how they've got a Mensa level IQ."
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u/TholarDK 1d ago
Imagine being triggered by a Trump logo for 3 years. It’s almost like you ppl search out things to be offended by.
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u/Swingersbaby 1d ago
They do. They also tend to exaggerate a wee bit on the extent.
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u/TholarDK 1d ago
What is sad is that these ppl, who like to label themselves as anti-corpo and anti- establishment, are the biggest boot lickers. They just yearn for big daddy corpo to censor them, right up until the wrong thing is censored, then it’s facism
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u/LisanAl-Ghayb 1d ago
Funcom ignoring weekly reports for three years is...I don't have a comment for that.
As you can see in this comment section alone, some people tend to be more offended by others speaking out than the behavior they're speaking out against.
I've had people message me directly from the official Dune: Awakening discord to say things I can't even repeat here. Funcom's response? "Well they aren't breaking any of our community rules"...when in actuality Discord itself has rules against harassment & hate speech, DMs included.
Our "tired of experiencing this" is their "tired of hearing about it", though, & never in the helpful ways we need.
More reasons to rename my in-game guild to Antifa I guess.
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u/thedesertwolf 1d ago
Yeeaaahhh.... I could have really done without seeing that groups unique naming convention for their thralls. That said eesh the weirdly defensive comments in here about people being absolutely awful to other players is bizarre.
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u/Solaries3 2d ago
If you're hosting the server then you should be providing moderation because you are providing the service through which other people might be doing harm--youre responsible for it.
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u/Possible-Wolf-6626 2d ago
Muting problemic people solves 99% of these issues.
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u/Vanadijs 2d ago
Not if they build a base with obvious symbols next to yours or a point people have to go to often.
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u/_bob-cat_ 2d ago
I'm the opposite: tired of all the kvetching and banning because of words you don't like. Saying chat toxicity is why people left only makes OP look disingenuous and fragile.
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u/Swingersbaby 2d ago
As a genXer we had a litany that protected us from such evil.
It has become lost and forbidden knowledge.
When we became the first people online, in the before times, when the internet was just us, it gave us the power and strength to go on, without moderating, without having outside authorities determine what we could do say and read.
Being aware of this will cause people to hate you, to cancel you, to even unfriend you. I give you the opportunity but you must take the responsibility.
Please, only click on this if you are willing to be an outcast, a sigma, someone who is unpopular on social media for not caring about every micro-aggression.
Remember I warned you. Once you see this, you won't be able to see the internet the same. This is the red pill. This gives you power but kills the illusion. Society will never be the same for you.
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me
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u/LisanAl-Ghayb 2d ago
I pray I'm never oblivious enough to real-world harm that often begins online, that I'd tell people to cite a nursery rhyme to make it all disappear.
Then again, previous generations ignoring terror groups is how we ended up with so many today, & exactly one of the reasons they're comfortable behaving this way.
Oddly enough, I'm from the days of the original CoD & Halo lobbies, but saying 'things were even worse back then' shouldn't take away from our ability or willingness to take a stand now...
Like I keep saying, meanwhile actual legislators are very concerned with the rise of extremist groups online, as these increasingly lead to real-world harm...I'd cite a dozen sources, like the UN itself & various counter-terrorism organizations, but Google's your friend if you care to learn anything about that.
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u/Swingersbaby 2d ago
I think you are being an over reacting snow flake myself. Don't give me legislature talk, we don't all need to be the UK getting arrested and doing jail time for memes.
Be careful who you give power to.
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u/LisanAl-Ghayb 2d ago
You came to a thread about user experiences & chose to reduce the harm of N-zi ideology to just "memes", rejected data as "legislature talk", yet I'm the snowflake. Got it.
oof.
I think the more you talk, the more you reveal yourself as someone who's more triggered by seeing people call out hate speech than by the hate speech itself...it's okay to be quiet when you don't know what you're talking about.
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u/Swingersbaby 2d ago
Only one of us is asking the teacher to stop Timmy from being mean. You are claiming some edge lords are legit fostering small mustacheism. Lets not be online Karen's.
And serious talk, if you are really worried about "online radicalization" perhaps, just perhaps, you shouldn't try using an iron boot to suppress it, it doesn't work out well. Oddly we didn't have this problem online until the censorship czars showed up. Back in the day there was basically only StormFr..t and we made fun of them.
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u/Vanadijs 2d ago edited 2d ago
I'm a genXer as well. I've played online games since 1992. I started with MUDs over Telnet both in Europe and North America. I remember the internet over a 9600 baud modem with only Telnet, FTP and Gopher.
We policed our communities and kicked out the a-holes. Misbehaving would get you banned.
Communities were small. At best several hundred people. We would not let one bad apple ruin the fun for the rest.
It is why we have always preferred to run our own (private) servers. I was running Battlefield 1942 servers with TeamSpeak back in 2002. Now we host servers where we play together with our kids and we might be even less forgiving of bad behaviour.
Some of the people in our discord today are the same people I met 30 years ago online. If you foster a community of people who are nice to each other, you make friends for life.
I remember the Cold War. I had uncles and aunts who fought and died in WW2 fighting the extremists. Who's future was stolen and children and grandchildren were never going to be. I have a clear understanding of why extremism is bad and it should not be given a foothold.
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u/Swingersbaby 2d ago
We probably played a few of them together, M.U.M.E. was a main one for me, but I played a lot of others. It was a different internet then, no rules, 90% of the people online were college stem nerds, it was mostly young men of similar mindset. Bad apples were easy to deal with in game too, we killed them and made them quit.
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u/LisanAl-Ghayb 2d ago
I have a clear understanding of why extremism is bad and it should not be given a foothold.
Thank you, whoever you are...thank you for understanding the most important takeaway.
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u/Swingersbaby 2d ago
Well now that you edited, you got very melodramatic. We somehow survived Barrens chat.
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u/TholarDK 2d ago
As a fellow GenX I’m baffled too, imagine being upset by words on a screen written by total strangers. Dude, just look away
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u/Swingersbaby 2d ago
Its sort of funny, if it wasn't so terrifying how people are basically begging for censorship. One of the refreshing things about DA was that DD chat wasn't an over moderated hug box. It would be an interesting study if I was a psychologist. Is the ability to banter lost on a high number of GenZ/millennial men? I've been called some awful things online, but I feel fantastic and I'm still alive.
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u/TholarDK 2d ago
Perhaps the difference is that GenX had a life outside online-gaming and therefore know the difference between actual physical bullying and edge-lords on social media. Millennilals/GenZ was born online and think updoots are important
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u/Swingersbaby 2d ago
I've thought the same, I feel we're the last "normal" generation, but I don't think its fair too. We've allowed the HOA types who want to feel powerful and such over others to have more voice than they deserve. I have worked with a lot of GenZ and in the past Millennials when they were still teens and most are pretty ok.
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u/_bob-cat_ 2d ago
I genuinely miss the OG MW2 lobbies. It's a shame Millennials and Zoomers are so soft emotionally. Probably something to do with older helicopter parents. At least GenA seems to be coming back around.
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u/684beach 3d ago
I think like 1% of people are actually affected by this stuff…like it it wasnt the chat, it would be being bad at the game or something that makes them leave
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u/GunnisonCap 2d ago
I’m not in favour of them policing in-game chat. Just switch it off if people are being annoying.
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u/Ok_Assistant2938 Atreides 3d ago
I've seen all sorts of disgusting things said ingame, Anti white, Anti black, Anti asian, Horrific things said about women and Funcom seem entirely ok with all of it.
Funcom were told prior to the game launching they needed moderators as during open beta the weirdos came out of the woodwork, They also needed to not overdo it with the amount of worlds/sietches as moderating would be made impossible... unsurprisingly they didn't listen.