Additional cutoffs, another emote removed

On 4/2/2022, I decided to extend the boycott to games that were developed using Epic Games technology, meaning that any game that uses the Unreal Engine is now included in the boycott that started as a result of their cutoff of V-Bucks from the Save the World mode in Fortnite, meaning I won't be supporting channels that stream those games or purchasing any new games that use that engine (being grounds for placing those games on ignore on Steam until Epic Games decides to do something about their decision that drove me off from their game & avoid any purchases that would put my money in their wallet).  In addition to this, another emote was removed from my channel (Killing Floor's Fleshpound emote), as well as I've added more games to the "Discontinued streams" section of my Game List (the re-written one, which I started when the Game List plug-in stopped working correctly).

Additional emotes will be removed or restricted from the channel as I find more games that were developed using Epic Games technology, as well as their games being restricted from being streamed on my own channel or hosted from others (possibly leading to unfollows of channels I was following and/or removal of those channels from my auto-host list, even if it's only temporary until Epic Games pulls their heads out of their ass & decides to fix the problem they caused with stealing V-Bucks from StW-only players & locking them in a mode they don't play).

EDIT:  Channels on my Discord for games developed/published by Epic Games, exclusive to the Epic Games platform or developed using their technology have already been set to private & are currently inaccessible.

Decision final, Fortnite boycott started, Fortnite emotes removed from channel

I was going to just update the last post, but considering the response from their support was enough to only solidify the decision that I was done with Fortnite (and unwilling to make any new purchases over the Epic Games platform), I determined a new post was going to be necessary.  In their response, they were clearly trying to be polite in their response, but ultimately I ran into a dead end on getting anything done:

Note that the support ticket was closed even before they sent the response above.

This decision is the ultimate end of my playing Fortnite and seeing as I won't have the game installed anymore, I won't be checking to see if an option to convert in the game will be added later, but will welcome any update from those that I made as friends in the game if they have the time to let me know if this changes.  In addition to the decision that I was done messing with this situation as a result of their poor decision to lock V-Bucks to the BR mode, I also sent the following response:

Then my decision is clear (based on your response); I am no longer your customer (any new purchases over the Epic Games launcher will not be happening on my account), a player/streamer of Fortnite (possibly no other games exclusive to the Epic Games launcher either) & will be working on a new public boycott against Fortnite, which includes supporting of other channels that stream Epic Games exclusive games on Twitch or focus primarily on game content exclusive to the Epic Games launcher on YouTube (given that most of the channels on my channel stream nothing but Epic Games exclusive games, I'll probably just disable auto-hosting until I find other channels to add), as well as removing Fortnite emotes I had created for use on my own channel.
I will be uninstalling the game directly after this response is sent, the new boycott expected to be published within a few days, as well as updating my review of the Save the World mode to show that I have since stopped playing the game (not even having it installed anymore) as a result of a change that stole 4+ years of my gaming life in re-assigning the premium currency I was collecting for use in StW to a mode that I was avoiding (for various reasons), collection of those V-Bucks being one of the few things that kept me playing it (associating those V-Bucks to 4-5 years of my life that has been stolen from me by forcing them to be locked in a mode that I don't play).

As for your statement of "continued support", any support that "was" there is now gone; I can not support a game or it's publishers (or in this case, their developers, as this was a development decision) when a decision this detrimental is made to a person that only plays StW, so your statement ends any support I have for the game or your company from this point forward, unless I see otherwise that I have access to what I was collecting in the mode I was collecting it for use in, (meaning considering I won't even have it installed anymore, either I need a notice that the conversion has happened or I will need a statement from other players of the game that they are allowed to spend V-Bucks towards llamas again, which has been the same situation in Genshin Impact regarding the lack of vertical invert, their lack of response towards the inquiry to add it & my unwillingness to even start it up without it, much less do the updates to even check for it; of course I won't be going to those channels while they are streaming personally boycotted games, so it will have to be over private messages from friends I have made in the game if I'm going to get any notice of such a change that might bring me back & make me even consider purchases over your platform again).

As stated in that response, because there is now a boycott active against Fortnite (and quite possibly any other Epic Games exclusive games, I haven't quite decided if I'm going to go through with that yet as I started streaming Dauntless myself, but there's a high probability that I will), I will be removing the Raven emote from my channel.  Given this was the emote that I was keeping in the 1000 bits slot on my channel (which 3 cheerers had achieved, given them permanent access to that emote), I will need to ask the bit leader which emote they would prefer to have access to (this is a benefit on my channel exclusive to the bit leader, they can reorder emotes on the channel on request).

If there are any more updates regarding my going back to Fortnite, it will be done on this blog, but it seems unlikely that this decision is going to be reversed...

I half-expect there may be retaliation to the response I sent them, which could quite possibly result in an account closer, which would result in the boycott definitely including all games exclusive to the Epic Games launcher (possibly on the Epic Games platform at all), but would go a step further, meaning all games developed using their technology (meaning the Unreal Engine), so may other developers & publishers would also be affected if the boycott against Epic Games goes into FULL EFFECT.

Fortnite once again broken, Save the World streams dead until fixed

The update to Fortnite on 8/17/2021 once again broken launching of the game, similar to an issue back in 2017.  Because of this, Save the World streams are dead on my channel until Epic Games can get this issue resolved (I'll be publishing a video of this issue later, as I have done in the past).

In addition to Save the World streams dying on my channel due to my inability to even start the game, I'll also be holding off any other purchases of games over the Epic Games launcher, any games where Epic Games is the developer/publish of that game or any other games that were developed using the Unreal Engine until resolved.

As with the last time Epic Games busted something so I couldn't run it, I've also disabled auto-hosting on my channel until the issue can be resolved.  The reason for this is most of the people that stream on my auto-host list are people that stream games from the Epic Games launcher, as well as games that tend to get auto-hosted usually are developed using the Unreal Engine.  When I see a game that is being streamed that I want to host, I will first research it to make sure the game is not developed/published by Epic Games, not on the Epic Games launcher & not developed using the Unreal Engine before I give a manual host to those channels.

Note that my channel has become primarily a Dauntless channel since the degradation of Fortnite.  While I do not intend on stopping those streams, I do intend on removing supporting information from the Now Playing section of my channel (and this blog) that could lead to money going into the game until I see launching of Fortnite has been fixed...

UPDATE:  At the beginning of my 8/17/2021 Dauntless stream (finding something else to stream because I can't even get Fortnite running), I opened with what was happening when I started Fortnite, repeating this crash 3 times before switching to Dauntless to show it wasn't a fluke:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1121778371

Note that embedding from Twitch has been busted for a few years, I have not been able to embed anything from their site since they changed their API.  The embedded version is from YouTube (a lower quality export from Twtich), but at least allows viewing from other sites without having to go to the site itself ot allow viewing (viewing on Twitch is still recommended if you want the higher quality version or are having trouble reading text in the YouTube version).

The Twitch version of this video was later shared in the bug report filed on the official Fortnite Discord server, editing in the link seeing as the report had been filed with a screenshot prior to this stream even starting.

As of yet, still no fix to the issue, only confirmation I have gotten is that there are a lot of upvotes on the bug report on their Discord server (last I checked, 9 up, 0 down, including my own upvote, not including the initial votes that are added after a bug report is filed), so it seems there may be others that are also running into this same issue.

Further PSN cutoffs

In addition to removing my PSN account from my Epic Games account last night, I've taken further steps to cut off PSN, this one related to other PSN users that aren't still using a PS3.

Roughly 4 days ago, I disabled receiving new friend requests on my primary PSN account.  This is because most friend requests I have been receiving do not have gaming history below PS4 or have no gaming history at all (normally meaning a new account for trolling/harassment purposes).  I may still be willing to add more PS3 friends in the future, but I didn't see a point in allowing additional incoming friend requests when they were people that I couldn't play with on that system or simply people trying to cause problems, so this will cut off people that are simply using PSN as an outlet to be abusive.

The second thing is I'm going to start pruning PSN friends that haven't been online in over a year.  Note that I'm going to be going by my PS3 friends list (not by what's on the site or the mobile app, as these have cut off PS3 support), meaning anybody who has not logged into a PS3 in over a year will be removed.  Of course there may be some exceptions, but for the most part, anybody listed as not being online in over a year when looking at my PS3 friend list will be removed.

Additional cutoffs are to be expected when it comes to the Sony brand name in the future.  A full boycott against Sony is still being considered, but as of yet, still not determined to be a step taken, but it's still a high probability in the near to distant future...

Epic Games launcher "no connect" workaround; boycott restrictions lowered, but not gone yet

Finally managed to get back into the Epic Games launcher today (attempting to troubleshoot it again after Epic Games opened a new support ticket with me in response to the BBB complaint against them for not being able to connect for over a month), however I had to use the 2 year old installer & patch back up as can be seen in this video.  This installer is being provided through this blog to allow others that may still be experiencing this problem with being able to connect (seeing as installer v10.19.2 won't connect for those getting hit by it).

Despite being able to now connect, I'm still waiting to see if they are going to allow me to gain Clip in Fortnite (seeing as their connection issue prevented me completing the final one-fifth of the task necessary to get her when the launcher patch on 10/28/2020 prevented me from being able to log into the launcher for well over a month), I'm not willing to go back to purchasing from their platform otherwise (all other steps in the boycott has been dropped however, only this one remains).

In addition to the remaining point of the boycott (if they don't decide to give me what I got ripped off for), this still affects who I'm supporting on Twitch when they are streaming Epic Games exclusive games, but no longer when an Epic Games developed/published game is available on other platforms, nor does it affect games created with the Unreal Engine anymore.

Regarding the emotes that were removed from my channel, I am going to reinstate the Fleshpound (Killing Floor) emote, however the Raven (Fortnite) emote will not be reinstated until I've managed to gain Clip in Save the World).  This ultimately means that the Fleshpound emote that was gained at 5000 bits on the channel will be moved to 1000 bits & vice versa for the Raven emote (provided I don't put something else in the 5000 bits emote slot first, depends on how long it takes to acquire that Hero, which could be never if Epic Games gives me the finger on getting her due to their technical issue with the launcher).

EDIT:  I've been told that the mirror on Google Drive isn't working, so I've created a secondary mirror using my personal site.  For the time being, this file type (MSI) is not restricted, but I may change that later if I find download sites are defrauding my website of credit for hosting a mirror again (this has already been done with RAR & ZIP files, which can only be downloaded if the originating traffic is from the website itself).

Epic Games launcher still busted, emotes retired & BBB complaint filed in response to no fix

In response to Epic Games' lack of commitment to keep their client functional & refusal to even give a response to the launcher connection issue on their Facebook page (or even provide a new installer that might connect to their servers to complete an initial installation), it's been determined that it was time to file a BBB complaint against them for funds lost on purchases over their platform that are no longer accessible (this was already determined once it hit the 1 month mark if not resolved by then).  Additional complaints will be filed to the FCC at 2 months, then to Internet Crimes at 3 months.  Further details about the BBB complaint will be published later to my personal site once I have time to add it to the site as a new review of Epic Games.

Additionally, it was determined that it was time to retire both the Raven (Fortnite) & Fleshpound (Killing Floor) emotes from the channel (the Killing Floor emote being removed due to the fact the game uses the Unreal Engine, meaning they paid Epic Games a licensing fee to be able to use it in their game).  These may come back in the future, but only if the launcher ever becomes functional again & only if I managed to obtain anything that was released new while this technical issue kept me from getting back into Fortnite to acquire them (that means there will need to be another StW birthday event, which I don't particularly see happening, so I don't expect I will be ending my boycott against them either).

Done waiting for Epic Games, going to stream other games

I've decided I've put my gaming life on hold for long enough waiting for Epic Games to fix their launcher, I WILL be running some other games & considering they will likely be single player, I will be streaming them on Twitch to boot (given even with the lower upload rate after I had to make cuts to my expenses, single player games shouldn't be affected by streaming taking the majority of my bandwidth capabilities).

Some (if not most) of the games that I was considering streaming unfortunately use the Unreal Engine, so I'll either need to not stream those games or make it a point that I don't recommend those games & point out why it is.  One thing I do make sure is done when I'm doing a boycott against a company (which in this case, not only targets any games developed or published by Epic Games, but also any game using their engine, as those companies have to pay a fee to Epic Games to be able to use their engine) is that any direct links in the Now Playing section of my channel that would result in a purchase of the game are removed; I suspect this is what I'll be doing should I attempt to stream games like Scourge: Outbreak or XCOM, along with details why that information has been removed & what needs to happen before I am going to recommend these games again.  Tomorrow I'm expecting to start streaming again while waiting for Epic Games to fix the mess they made in their 10/28/2020 launcher update (which is no longer limited to just login issues on operating systems before Windows 10; additional reports on their Facebook page has confirmed that some people can't even log in on Windows 10, there's an issue with logging in with linked accounts since the removal of the Apple login option & Uplay activations are currently broken if you try to play them over the Epic Games launcher).

Bug report & feedback to Epic Games

On 2/27/2020, I started to get fed up with changed made to make Fortnite StW more like BR & because I needed to file a bug report anyways, I made a very detailed Feedback message to Epic Games regarding all the changes they are making to make StW more enjoyable for BR player, but as a result, are pushing away StW players that don't care for BR.  This feedback message was as follows:

After the interface rehash, I've noticed that the tracking function has become near useless due to removal of the overlays that show mat availability for whatever is being tracked; the only thing "tracking" a schematic does at this point is pins it at the top of that section when you have your inventory visible.  I always wanted to see this function updated to allow tracking of mats for crafted down versions of that schematic, but seeing as this overlay has been removed, I'm going to assume this function is going to be retired anyways...

I was one of the original Fortnite players, never a fan of BR, only sticking to StW.  Every change that is made to StW to make it more like BR only makes me lose further interest in the mode that I stick to.  One might say I am biased against BR, which wouldn't be too far from the truth; harassment from a single BR streamer rallying others to join him on his retaliation movement to a report filed against him in StW (with evidence video) on 2/19/2018 targeting any online profile of mine he can find for over 2 years would do that to anybody (and that bugger is still able to access BR today, despite my attempts to make his aimbotting activity over multiple games more visible, especially in Battle Royale; Twitch even "rewarded" his poor behavior with a Partner status).  The more StW is made to be like BR, the less enjoyment I get from it & I may eventually stop playing Fortnite entirely if it goes much further.

I know that BR has a higher priority than StW does & much of what StW players say will go unheard, so as long as this trend continues, StW players will continue to stop playing the game (most of the larger StW streamers I followed for StW have already stopped playing the game or play it very minimally) & I may be following suit in the near future as long as StW continued to take functions & visual perspectives from BR, a mode I will never be able to get into because any possibility of enjoying it has been ruined by a single individual & those he recruited to do his bidding...  Sooner or later the only people that will be left playing StW will be the BR players & they only care about the V-Bucks they can take from that mode to purchase BR skins, is this really what StW needs to be degraded to, a V-Buck farm for BR players?

In all honesty, I don't see this as making any difference other than maybe seeing a change in that now dysfunctional tracking function, the rest of it will likely get ignored, I would be more expecting to find myself on the receiving end of a ban for speaking my mind (that would be the end of all Epic Games purchased for me in the foreseeable future if that happened, a full boycott along with any other game that use the Unreal Engine, an engine developed by Epic Games, where they receive royalties from companies for using it in their games).  I don't expect anything will happen, but I will certainly give an update on this blog if something does come out of it (or further publications on my personal site if it does turn into a full boycott).

The purpose in making this statement public is so that it doesn't go unheard, even if Epic Games chooses to ignore it & the outcome is more personally unfavorable than beneficial to pure StW players (if "pure" can even be used at this point, StW has already been tainted by BR mechanics & it just gets worse over time), at least what was said will still be heard to those with open minds & others that have also had the same discrepancies against changes to make StW more like BR.