Dragon Age and Anthem producer says stop harassing developers "because you don't know the circumstances that resulted in the thing that you're mad at"

gamesradar.com:

Dragon Age and Anthem veteran Mark Darrah has encouraged fans to channel frustrations constructively and to the appropriate place rather than let lose on random developers "because you don't know the circumstances that resulted in the thing that you're mad at."

In a new video titled 'Your $70 Doesn't Buy You Cruelty,' the former BioWare executive comments on the harassment of developers within the games industry – from the celebration of layoffs to more targeted personal attacks.

To start things off, Darrah makes clear what the video is not about. People don't have to like a game because they spent $70 on it and can certainly be critical about it. They spent a lot of your own money on it, after all. That said, there's a difference between airing grievances where it's most likely to make an impact and just being cruel to a random human.

"If you are mad at that Ubisoft game, be mad at Ubisoft," he says. "Express your anger to Ubisoft or the studio that made the game. But you cross a line when you start being cruel about it."

So what's wrong with being cruel? First off, why would someone ask that? Darrah says you "don't need to go out of your way to cause harm to other people because of a video game."

"When you celebrate layoffs at a studio because the game that you don't like didn't do that well, you're crossing a line into being cruel, and fundamentally, you should have more grace for other human beings," Darrah says.

Secondly, fans don't know who is actually to blame. Darrah throws up a hypothetical that someone might not like how an actor delivered a line. Sure, it could well be down to the actor, but it also might be down to who was directing them, how the writer asked their work to be delivered, or maybe that was the only take they got.

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But even then, it's not so simple. Continuing with the hypothetical, if the actor's funky delivery was down to the writer, that doesn't necessarily mean someone should