It’s very difficult to say anything with certainty since none of us have seen the confidential contract between McGregor and IO Interactive and the confidential conversations around it, and if we had it wouldn’t be proper to disclose the details.
That McGregor hasn’t announced he’s suing IO Interactive reasonably indicates that the latest DLC isn’t entirely offensive to him or his business team.
Simple statements of x is more important than y, particularly when you’re not clarifying anything on the x and the y in this perspective - and there honestly doesn’t seem to be issues.
Consumer Rights
Everyone who bought the DLC still has access to the DLC. Companies have always had the right to remove items from sale at any time, for any reason—for it to be otherwise would require companies to keep all manner of archaic and unpopular items in stock, which would not work for the vast, vast majority of products. Phone companies don’t need to offer you an original Bakelite phone that requires you connect to an operator to make a call.
Game Preservation
Again, everyone who bought it still has a copy. There is no announcement from IO Interactive about what they would look at doing when shuttering the project, but historically lots of content that was short term has been made long term where viable. There are also plenty of videos of all the content available, and potentially people who worked out to archive it an currently non-legal manner.
Given how wildly unbalanced EULAs on gaming platforms are, it is distinctly possible they could have just removed the DLC entirely and required anyone who wanted to a refund to manually request it. It is also likely they would have had to eat the costs of all those refunds and not been able to recoup any funds they paid to McGregor. They opted instead to allow consumers to make their own decision if they ever want to interact with the content again.
If we were going to have a nuanced, in depth conversation about Game Preservation then it would be about things like the Elusive Target: The Wildcard which has not (and probably cannot) be included in Arcade etc. I can’t help but notice that the thread for that did not receive the same rush and thus I am immediately concerned that people are not so much interested in any of the above but think it’s a better argument.
Association
Companies have always had the right to choose who they do and don’t want to associate with for any reason with only a few exceptions like employee protection laws. The McGregor didn’t publicly declare he was suing them when the DLC was pulled down is a pretty good indicator that 1. IO Interactive did preserve that right in some form in the contract; and 2. he accepted that it was a natural consequence.
Again, haven’t seen the contracts but I would not be surprised if all IO Interactive contracts with their visible talent (voice actors, people who’s likeness they use, etc) includes a clause that IO Interactive can sever the contract if they are found to have engaged in serious wrongdoing. This is very standard sort of thing, to the extent that in the Carano v. Disney lawsuit Disney was even able to quote Carano’s own defence team arguing for it in other publications. (This was, in legal terms, very, very funny.)
This is basic rights to control one’s brand, control one’s perception in the public and control one’s expression which is considered necessary for company’s to exist as any sort of private entity under the control of the owners. To argue otherwise is to say that companies cannot choose who appears in their advertisements, who they sponsor in events, where they set up their buildings and who they hire in key positions.
Trivialization
This forum is a civilized place and thus we do not trivialize the suffering of people who are victim to rape, sexual assault, sexual abuse etc. If you are the kind of person who casually announces that they don’t really matter because you want to buy a DLC, you do not belong on this forum. As I am a civilized person, I will give anyone who had made a statement indicating as such an opportunity to reflect.
If I see further statements as such in this thread, or a further dismissive attitude of such, I will help those people by giving them more time to reflect (via suspension) or removing them from the forum (via ban).
