So here's my answer.
So I've followed a particular game from the beginning. Its name is Darkest Dungeon, though I facetiously describe it as Derpest Dungeon for reasons you will soon see.
Very long story short, I like most people was fooled by the game's initial promises, and I like most people early on saw through them quickly and it became apparent there would be a great deal of fixes and content expansion required before it could ever be the game it claims it is. I, and many people submitted critical feedback accordingly and were disregarded and ignored, while blind empty praise was favored and amplified. It became apparent very quickly they valued some random streamer with 2 viewers including themselves far more highly than any number of people who could provide details, math/reason/logic backed breakdowns of the problems and the solutions and even field test those solutions for them through modding.
And it's not like fixing them was exceptionally difficult at first either, it just requires you understand math/logic/emergent gameplay, and then make appropriate changes in a text file.
Instead, the game moved steadily further away from its initial advertisement, seemingly out of pure petty spite and overblown egos. What's more, while the community as a whole was still fairly good at this point, there were some sections of it that were… questionable even then.
End result? Most actual challenge gamers and such left, and the ones that remained like me became increasingly critical of the game's shallow, one dimensional, and trivial mechanics. These… elements responded with swarming hostility, groupthink, and eventually doxxing, resulting in my deleting my Reddit account in disgust.
At around the halfway point, the devs throughly screwed the pooch by releasing a particular patch in which every aspect of it was wrong, and what's more they did so in a way that made the problems with the game blatant so even those not skilled as systemic analysis could see what I've been thinking and saying for months. Now I withheld most of my criticisms before this point as they weren't proven, and were harsh. But this, after months of ignoring all criticism from all users and producing utter nonsense, and personally emailing me informing me they were offended I considered an Early Access game in need of fixing (that's the whole ****ing point of Early Access dumbasses!) and continually and aggressively falsely advertising a broken product? I had enough, and began leveling unrestrained criticism both at the game and the developer's business practices.
Meanwhile, most people are caught on the corpse strawman one way or the other though a significant number saw through it and caught the other problems, and in a matter of days the entire community for this game became just like the subreddit, but worse. The devs, meanwhile began aggressively censoring criticism instead of merely ignoring it, so it just went in the review section instead and that's why negative reviews have near 100% dominated ever since.
The game's never advanced beyond that point, hell it never advanced beyond its initial Early Access release point. Yes there's some new skins, but the core game is just stack Hellions and spam damage, same as it always was. Most classes and skills are still worthless, most mechanics are still best ignored, and the game's longer and grindier than ever which is only amplified by the lack of variety, as well as implementing hardcoded tedium, grind, and brokenness so that mods literally can't save the game anymore, even if there wasn't the small matter of them alieniating the only modder with actual talent (me) because I could no longer support their activities and make them money by doing their jobs for them in good conscience.
And the community? Well they're more hypertoxic than ever, they pretty much spend more time going around negative reviews and insulting the authors and/or me (even if I'm not there commending them on a well written piece or offering corrections, etc) than actually playing the game, they speak with authority on new features despite having 0-2 hours in the last 2 weeks. They stalk and harass critics all over the internet (especially me), they've doxxed me more than once, I've put one in prison for federal crimes, they've harassed my friends just for being my friends even if they're not involved in the Derpest Drama… They are truly, absolutely, and without question the scum of this ****ing Earth.
And the worst part is when people I've known for years, that are fully aware of this corporate corruption turn around and support them anyways for a bribe, dismiss me out of hand as just a number, and when I approach them privately informing them of the nature of the companies they're promoting they ignore that and make a public scene lying and defaming me.
It's really done a good job of showing me who my real friends are, and are not. But just consider, there's at least 10 people that have serially stalked me for months over a shitty walking simulator by lazy, incompetent, egotistical developers who have clearly spent their entire budget on marketing and advertising and not actually making a good game.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is wtf is wrong with the gaming community.
