I am inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. They may or may not be doing the right thing for the wrong reasons, but at least they ARE doing the right thing. That decision was made by a set of humans, and likely at least some of them are well meaning.

In any case the corporate entity as a whole is not conscious. A strictly behavioralist approach is appropriate there. If it does the good thing it gets the carrot, if it does the bad thing it gets the stick. We can't win it's heart and mind because it has neither, so we have to settle for keeping it's behavior in line.

I know businesses often bring it upon themselves, but this "fucked if they do, fucked if they don't" attitude needs to be carefully applied. It leaves no room for anything, really, and it's exhausting.

Yes nobody is doing good deeds to stab themselves. Not sure what your point is here?

It's an Elder Scrolls game. Technical issues are part of the product spec.

Bethesda is notorious for buggy software releases. They could spend 10 years on something and it would likely have tons of bugs still.

How can you leak a 20 years old game?

I mean, when you reach the point where they advertise the mod in dev spotlights videos, I think it's fair to say there's some institutional support, even if it's not codified.

> Bethesda doesn't think anything.

It even kind of irks me when people talk about “Bethesda” when it's really “Microsoft Corporation presents Microsoft Gaming presents Zenimax Media presents Bethesda Softworks presents Bethesda Game Studios”.

Not picking on you in particular since the same thing happens with iD Software, Github, NPM, and many many more. I feel like there's a collective lack of straightforward language to discuss the influence of this kind of corporate structure. Falling back to the singular-subsidiary name with the rest unspoken is probably exactly what they want.

at the very least, it shows that bethseda leadership are not in the habit of alienating their fans.

I think people understand how metonymy works.

I hate the same about how media presents news regarding to nations. Russia attacks instead of Putin's army attacks, Brussels denies instead of EU officials deny, etc. It irks me so much, especially in a world where we pretend to do away with racism. Because what these headlines end up reinforce are just stereotypes. Which just keeps the people in their bubbles, wasting the chance of them learning something new about the world.

Let’s call a spade a spade. Nintendo litigates worse than any other company and they never drop prices. I can look the other way because they’re otherwise very good to their customers but they do have genuine faults.