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What companies do you feel comfortable with supporting?
Lately, I've been reviewing companies I interact with a lot, and thinking about whether I feel comfortable supporting them as a business. This is mostly based on whether they are a good, ethical company who cares about the consumer. I'm interested what companies you think fit this criteria. I'm not going to lie, I originally intended this question to be about Valve, but decided to make it more open ended. So to start the conversation, do you think Valve fits this?
Valve doesn't have any strikes (as in, three strikes you're out) against it as far as I know, but I really haven't kept up with them as much since they stopped actually making games.
I'm pretty cynical, however, when it comes to any business "deserving" support based on ethical merit. They're businesses in a free market. They are self-serving as a rule, and any semblance of moral awareness is only approached as yet another self-serving means to the only end they seek, which is profit. Any social media presence is a calculated means to an end. Any pragmatic humanist motto is a calculated means to an end. Any fair or generous treatment of employees is a calculated means to an end. It's all just an optimization game to them.
I'm of the opinion that any company, even a so-called progressive, ethical company, would not hesitate to partake in the most inhuman practices if they thought for an instant they could get away with it.
In the same sphere (gaming) I find these to be rather trustworthy too:
CD Projekt (GOG) + CDPR (Witcher series, upcoming Cyberpunk 2077)
Paradox Interactive (as publisher + dev of EU4, CK2, etc.)
Klei Entertainment (Don't starve, Invisible Inc, etc.)
Obsidian (Fallout: NV, Pillars of Eternity, etc.)
Digital Extremes (warframe)
Nintendo (even though they are a bit backwards in some areas)
Sony + Naughty Dog (uncharter, last of us, etc.)
Still trust but kinda iffy these days:
Blizzard
Bioware
Bungie
Bethesda/ZeniMax
Rockstar
Surprisingly slowly gaining back my trust:
Ubisoft
Microsoft
EA
I love paradox games, but hate their monetization schemes. Theres something around $200 worth of DLC for CKII, and much if it has no need to exist as an independent item, or should have been included in the base game.
Some of my friends who got really into Stellaris also complained that it felt like the company just wouldn't stop cranking out new patches and DLC, to the detriment of the initial game design.
I still love all their major titles, I just wish they would cool it with the DLC.
I would normally hate such a DLC focused approach and how expensive their games get, but with how easy it is to sink hundreds or thousands of hours into Paradox's games I never really feel slighted by them. I always feel like I'm getting way more than my money's worth. The amount of content and replayability in their games is just unmatched.
And how exactly do you propose they pay for the continued development of those games and the expansions/DLCs, many of them released 5+ years after the initial game release, if they don't charge for them?
They already include all the critical game updates from the expansions and even many of the new game mechanics as well into the base game, with no purchase required... and in multiplayer only the host needs a DLC to fully enable it for all the other players in the game. I would say that is more than fair... especially since a lot of the DLC is entirely cosmetic and not required at all to fully enjoy every meaningful aspect of the games, especially since they are grand strategy games.
Don't get me wrong, I see why it annoys people to see that many DLCs, and I do wish Paradox released new "definitive editions" with all the previously released DLC included every few years to help onboard new players. But most of the complaints about their DLC are due to misunderstanding what's actually in most of the DLC and/or having somewhat unrealistic expectations, IMO.
This is not a complicated issue.
There doesn't need to be 10 different portrait packs and the ruler designer is such a critical component there is no reason it shouldn't be a part of the the base game. This is the kind of stuff I'm talking about. Honestly I'm sorry, but I dont understand how $300 worth of DLC is fair in anyones mind.
You're right, it's not. Without earning money they can't pay developers to keep working on the games. You can't keep 40 people employed for years after a game releases on the diminishing returns from the continued sale of the base game alone. So again, "how exactly do you propose they pay for the continued development of those games and the expansions/DLCs, many of them released 5+ years after the initial game release, if they don't charge for them?"
I agree that the ruler designer and even the CK2 to EU4 savegame convertor should be free, but all the other expansions and DLC need to have a price attached to them or they wouldn't be able to pay the people who work on them. And as for the purely cosmetic stuff, like portrait packs, they are not required to play the game, and you don't need them at all, but people choosing to buy them helps further subsidize the cost of continued development of the games.
My problem is not that I want things for free, if you think that's where I'm coming from. My problem is that I believe their DLC is predatory in it's pricing structure.
Maybe if every other publisher did this then I would have a harder time arguing with you. But the only other mainstream game I know of that even comes close to CKII in terms of DLC is the Sims 3. I don't buy that this is their only option, or that they're forced to do this . As far as portraits go, there are a ton of mods that force or encourage you to use them which is the real reason people feel compelled to buy them.
I don't think we're ever going to see eye to eye on this, but that's my take. And it's all I have to say at this point.
Do you mind if I ask what EA's doing to gain back your trust?
Mostly just good experiences with Origin. It's a surprisingly solid client and their customer support is top notch. Don't get me wrong, EA still have a long way to go before I actually trust them, and for every two steps forward they seem to take take 1.95 steps back (e.g. all the latest DICE games have been micro-transaction laden trash) but they are still slowly moving forward it feels like. Or maybe it's just that there seems to be so many companies out there so much worse than them now (e.g. Epic), that they only look better in comparison? I dunno. :/
FWIW a close friend of mine is a video game designer, and she says that CDPR treats their employees like garbage (especially the artists) and criminally underpays for the work they force on people.
https://www.glassdoor.ca/Reviews/CD-PROJEKT-RED-Reviews-E644250.htm
It sounds like your friend is either misinformed or exaggerating. They seem to pay excellent wages for Poland, although perhaps less than other devs in Warsaw. And there is nothing about them treating employees "like garbage", quite the opposite in fact, although there is some complaints about upper management.
What about non-profit companies?
non-profits, not-for-profits, charitable trusts, and other groups of that nature can still do all sorts of awful shit--they're generally just less likely to do it than for-profit organizations are. the WWF (which is a charitable trust) for example was found this year to be doing things like sponsoring paramilitary organizations which raped and tortured people before killing them among other things.
It also depends on where they are registered too. Canada has rather strict rules and laws for non-profits (and especially charities), whereas in the US non-profits and even charities can essentially be used as just smokescreens for funneling out as much money as possible by their administrators.
p.s. In other words, do your research before you donate... and IMO charitynavigator is a great way to do that.
E.g. Susan G. Komen Foundation = booo... WWF = meh... Doctors Without Borders = Yay!
But there are plenty of non-profits that do great things, like Spectria.
Buying from Bandcamp actually feels like buying directly from the artists. I purchased a physical CD from one of my favorite bands and got an email back saying they couldn't fulfill my order. Normally that would be a bad thing, but this came from one of the actual members of this band, who gave me digital download codes for their entire discography.
Why couldn't they fulfill it? Were the just out of stock at the time?
The band actually had broken up by the time I made the order, so the merch was in storage. I had no idea since I don't usually follow any individual bands, and I couldn't ever see one of their live shows since I live on a different continent.
Ah, interesting. That's super cool they sent you a digital version!
And lossless, drm free audio.
Oh my goodness yes. I purchase a lot of music from Bandcamp. Gives me the warm fuzzies.
I use spotify and I am, from a user standpoint, happy with it. Is bandcamp a spotify alternative?
not really. it’s an more like an alternative to itunes, but much more direct and gives you drm-less mp3s/flacs
Plus there's so much great music out there that would go unheard without sites like Bandcamp to connect them to listeners.
I like Valve's progress for Linux, they deserve major respect for allowing Linux to be a legit gaming platform, but I don't like their DRM. The company that most has my respect these days is AMD, since they're finally breaking Intel's monopoly, and I like how they've also turned far more friendly towards Linux (their modern drivers are awesome!). I've always gotten the impression that seventh generation, an organic cleaning products company, was pretty good, although I don't know much about other than that their scentless dish soap is the best grease remover I've yet to find for use in the kitchen.
I supported GOG for years because of their DRM-free stance, but Valve is bringing me back with Proton. GOG made a big hullabaloo about supporting Linux a couple of years ago, but now it feels like they've left that initiative to die on the vine. Galaxy has been out for five years(!) and there are still no signs of a Linux release.
Holy shit Galaxy is 5 years old. Does anyone know where I line up for my walker and AARP card?
I had the same thought!
Although, in the interest of fairness, I got my dates wrong. It was announced in 2014, but it entered public beta on May 5, 2015, so really it's only turning 4 in three days. You can hold off on the walker for another year!
Steam does not require DRM. Many (most?) games do use Steamworks' DRM, but it's not required for Steam games. Games like Kerbal Space Program (DRM-free) almost force you to copy the entire game folder, so you can have multiple versions of the game installed at once for mod compatibility.
I'm hesitant to support most companies, since a company might seem to be good and then turn the moment they smell profit in sabotaging their customers, but valve has been relatively consistently pro-consumer. Especially recently with the support of Proton, the refund system (not as recent), and just general lack of significant anti-consumer behavior.
Typically though, I find the smaller the company, the better I feel supporting them. Indie devs, local businesses, one-person operations, etc. all seem to care about the consumer much more than the monopolistic corporations that seem to be becoming more and more prevalent.
That's true about any person or business, though. Ownership can change hands, people can change their behavior, money can change people's minds. It's just important to be aware.
Currently the world is capitalistic, and so margins must be met. Inevitably, someone's getting fucked over, regardless of who you support.
However, I've been trying to buy products produced in countries that I believe (maybe naively) have higher standards for corporations to abide, including environmental regulation and worker's rights. As an American, I try to buy American when possible, not out of some jingo-istic bent, but because I believe that means the goods were produced with a decent standard of responsibility and there's less transportation involved, meaning less emissions produced. Am I making a difference? Probably not. But, I get to pat myself on the back. :)
I like your style, I am similar. I also like supporting people and companies I know, theoretically the money goes back into the community. So I try to buy local and American when I can.
Apple is generally "okay" privacy-wise but it's proprietary platform is not as good as they say. They still track your every movement through Google's service (although they "anonymize" it for what that's worth) but really I think their biggest crimes are their repair policy which is totally insane (See Louis Rossmann) and well, their walled garden.
I personally like Fairphone and Sony (with their Open Devices Program) to install LineageOS since they try to make it easy to modify their devices with fully free software which I really like.
Of course, there's Purism's Librem 5 which goes the extra mile in the phone department but I think for most people, it won't be the best platform for them. (It doesn't run Android)
Going back to Apple though, their T2 chip stuff in their newer Macs just killed any Linux you could ever get on there which is.. a shame, you're stuck with two proprietary OSs which are really no better one from the other in my opinion. I hope I didn't ramble on for too long...
Costco seems to treat their employees well and I don't think they have any major strikes against them. I live alone and can't really use what they supply now (mostly bulk grocery purchases), but I loved them when I had a family.
I respect Costco. I don't feel like I'm getting bent over and railed when I shop there (although generally with grocery stores that isn't the case anyway). I also like HEB and Trader Joe's. One that I don't like is Whole Foods. it's pretty overpriced and I think they rely on people thinking whatever is sold there is "whole" and good or something like that, when in reality they have just as much processed foods and junk as other places. A farmers' market is a much better option IMO. After they got bought by amazon I have nothing good to say about whole foods.
Are non-profits "companies"? I don't think I can trust any for-profit company anymore. I occasionally like their products and can be a happy customer. But "support"? No.
While I can see where you're coming from but I think a lot of for-profit companies do some great work. Companies like Red Hat, Canonical, OpenSUSE, Khronos group, GOG, Tutanota, Gitlab, Purism, System76, I could go on but I think you get the point.
There will always be bad apples and I think bundling everyone up is not great.
Sorry for a bit of a necro but Khronos is a non-profit
I am with you. I saw this post and thought "Is it even possible to support companies, from an ethical point of view?".
And the worst is when you are looking for a job and you only see these shitty for-profit companies that would do the most atrocious things if they could get away with it and if it gave them profit.
Libro.fm is a good alternative to Audible, if you're wanting to get away from Amazon.
They sell DRM-free audiobooks, and they give commissions from each sale to a local bookstore of your choosing. I mention them here because I recently started a subscription with them and have been very happy with it.
They also have, in my opinion, a killer feature that they do not advertise. While their books are DRM-free and you can listen to them in an app of your choosing, they also have an app of their own. When you change the playback speed for a book in their app, the time remaining adjusts to reflect that. If your book is 9 hours long and you play it at 1.5x, it will display 6 hours remaining. Audible and Libby refuse to do this, and it frustrates me to no end!
Valve. While I don't like DRM, they have the best content platform and try to be fair to devs, publishers, and customers. They develop their own awesome stuff and make ir compete in their market against other companies evenly. I also like their push for Linux support, even after their hardware line failed, they're still commited Linux support on par with Windows, and probably better than MacOS if you consider Proton.
Bandcamp, because they created a system that allows anybody to publish and sell music. CDBaby, as well, and neither uses DRM.
CDProjekt/GOG. DRM-free gamws for Mac, Windows and Linux. Great. I hate they won't make Galaxy cross-platform, and so directly equivalent if not competitive with Steam, but they do good work restoring digital games, and make decent AAA titles.
Itch.io, because it's basically Bandcamp but for games.
Lots of game companies, apparently.
I think Valve pumps more in Linux than Windows.
People tend to forget they also work on the MESA and AMD open source drivers. Also a bit in the kernel and a bit all over the place because of SteamOS.
They also maintain the Steam runtime to make apps on Linux work across distros (if the devs actually use it)
The only real companies I like to support are some small indie game dev studios - like Team Cherry for example.
I generally support companies that do open-source work, like Mozilla (especially Firefox, Rust, and everything they've done for the web), Red Hat (their contributions to Linux and to supporting Linux in "corporate" environments), Gitlab and AMD (especially compared to Intel).
One company that I have a tough time with is Valve. I think what they've done for Linux gaming has been amazing - from Source Engine's Linux support, to Steam Machines/Steam OS, and now Proton, they've definitely contributed a lot to Linux gaming.
On the other hand, they've got a lot of issues. Steam support is notoriously awful, which it absolutely doesn't have to be, for such a large platform. Steam has started getting a lot more low quality games, and Valve has stopped making games altogether. And, for their existing games (I'm only familiar with CS:GO, this may differ for Dota 2 and TF2) they tend to have terrible communication with the community, and for a long time were barely updating and fixing the game (although this has been changing).
I'm glad that there are other services popping up (Epic Games Store and Discord's game store). However awful they are, they'll give Steam some competition, and hopefully force Valve to make some changes. It seems like they've been trying to compete with Discord and Twitch with their new-ish streaming and chat systems, but I really don't think that's working...
Despite the whole anti-gay aspect (which, if that's a barrier for your support I totally get it), I'm a big fan of Chick-fil-A. Unlike so many fast food restaurants, they seem to really value their employees and the quality of the experience. As such, it's a rare occurrence when you find a Chick-fil-A that isn't super clean and packed full of diligent workers. I respect the consistency, and the quality of the job compared to other businesses in the same category.
Anti-gay aspect? Never heard of that. Although, I've never been in one so I wouldn't know.
they fund a bunch of anti-LGBT and pro-conversion therapy groups, some of which are classified as hate groups.
Yikes. No thanks
Wikipedia has a good explanation of it. It's pretty disappointing. But then you realize that Chick-Fil-A is run by over 2,000 franchisees and gives quality jobs to far more young adults and lower-income workers. It bothers me sometimes when I see the entire organization reduced to the philanthropic misdirection of their CEO.
Right now, the only companies I feel comfortable supporting are ones who are trying to sustainably manufacture anything and everything in their respective markets, and/or are trying to run carbon neutral or as a carbon sink (for example, the Flax Fiber Composite industry, where they're growing Flax, blending it with carbon fiber, and entrapping it with Resin).
Companies that responsibly use water, and companies that have made a commitment to running entirely on renewables and minimized their manufacturing footprint. I think we have a moral obligation to ensure that we dont destroy the only planet we have.
Sadly it's a pretty short list.
What do you think of Fairphone? They're trying to help in the phone market, thought it might interest you.
It's a worthy and worthwhile project. I hope it catches on. Last I checked, they were experiencing pretty rapid growth in the European market. I hope they expand into making laptops and tablets, too!
It would bring some much needed competition in spaces that could use a totally different approach.
I’m really late to the party, but Chobani is my vote. The company was founded by a Kurdish refugee, they are dedicated to human rights and treating their employees well. They pay a living wage, employees have ownership in the company should they go public, they regularly create jobs for other refugees, and they announced they are going to pay off a school districts lunch debt.
I don't have very many strongly-formed opinions regarding companies I actively support, but I do like Discord as a storefront. Valve is alright but Steam is still pretty monopolistic and it's flaws don't appear to get as much attention as they should, whereas Epic has a whole host of issues that seem to expand daily (i.e. abusive hours, anti-consumer exclusives, underdeveloped storefront, etc).
Compared to this, Discord – especially as of their last store updates – appears to be doing pretty well, both to developers and consumers. The 10/90 share is the best one I've seen short of Itch.io, and the last big update related to the store helped the game visibility problem they used to have. It's still not perfect in that regard, but it works.
Finally, they seem to have a slightly better variant on Steam Direct: a $25 fee that is then followed by a human run-through to ensure you're following the rules. I'm not entirely sold on whether or not that'll adequately keep out that which has plagued Steam should Discord grow a lot, but it looks good so far.
I'm not keeping my hopes up too much though. As many others have said here already, a corporation wants money, and if Discord gets too big I've little doubt their thus-far pro-consumer practices will start to fade away.
I really wish Discord would actually offer Linux games..
Valve's linux support and work is really just amazing.
I'm curious if you could elaborate on Steam's "monopolistic" behavior? Like, yes, they do have the most popular store but from what I can tell they've never told a developer to not publish on another platform or bought exclusivity deals and they also partner with GOG and other companies to help them distribute games and offer more to their customers.
Yeah, monopolistic was probably a poor word choice. It's moreso the second half of my sentence that I'm referring to with it — Steam's big enough right now that Valve doesn't really seem to pay a lot of attention to it's problems or competitors, and Steam suffers for it as a result.
Definitely agree regarding Linux though. I don't use Linux at all currently, but I plan to in the future, and I really respect Valve's efforts on that front regardless.
The first which comes to mind is EVGA. They once sent me a new video-card years after mine was out of warranty and failed on me. I didn't even have to pay shipping. This was like 10 years ago, though I've read many similar stories since. I don't really game anymore, but if I ever choose to go back I'll buy as many components possible of the EVGA branding. Their quality and price is pretty on-par with others, but that customer care is what gained my loyalty.