CDPR Sued For Securities Violations

[shawnhcorey]

I feel that we are speaking past each other when it comes to language.

Well yes. I said as much in my first post: I do not understand how the word systemic is used in this context.

To me, systemic means behaviour of the system as opposed to behaviour within the system. Businesses failing is behaviour within the system. Entire line of businesses failing is also behaviour within the system. Neither is caused by the system itself. The system makes them possible but not inevitable.

 

[embee]

Which could be on the inside, so that the company can declare bankruptcy.

Not likely. Shareholders take a bath in liquidation. They are the last to get paid.

 

[dragoner]

Not likely. Shareholders take a bath in liquidation. They are the last to get paid.

They will never get paid. Then again, if management is the major shareholder, declaring bankruptcy is the right thing to do so that they can retain profits; otherwise they would have to pay share value out of their own pockets. With a loss, it's a tax write off, and reduced taxes on the profits vs capital gains.

 

[Sock Puppet]

Nuisance lawsuit by ambulance chasers on behalf of whiners.

Cyberpunk may have sold badly on original version last-gen consoles, but it runs fine enough on the pro consoles and current-gen consoles. And on PC it's one of the best selling games of 2020 despite being out for less than a month:

Best of Steam - 2020

A look back at the year's top sellers, new releases, most-played games, and more!

store.steampowered.com

Cyberpunk 2077, Doom Eternal, and Among Us among Steam’s top selling games for 2020

Red Dead Redemption 2, Fall Guys, and Destiny 2 are also prominent

www.pcgamesn.com

It's already turned a profit. The investors will get paid. They're not going to bite.
Most shareholders will play the longgame and wait for the stock to rise back up. Spending money on lawyers is a waste. The price of the stock dropped, but it was lower back on March 20th and is higher than when it went public last November. When the DLC is released and people actually playing the game dominate the conversation, stock will rise again. Ditto when versions for current gen consoles are released. And paid DLC paired with a GOTY edition.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Corporations are not evil; they are, however, amoral. The best you can hope for is a corporation to act out of enlightened self-interest.

"Amoral" is a euphemism for moral apathy, when speaking of sapient people, whether individually or in groups. Moral apathy that leads to harm is willful harm. Willful harm as a continuing pattern is evil.

Not all corporations are evil, but the "amoral" argument is just a lame excuse invented by people who didn't want you to hold them accountable for harm generated by their decisions.

 

[Umbran]

Moral apathy that leads to harm is willful harm.

Eh. That one is stretched a bit thin. "I don't care, and thus didn't pay attention, and someone got hurt." is not really the same as, "I wanted to hurt you, and did so."

Moral apathy does not absolve you from responsibility for the consequences of your actions, if that's what you are looking for - moral apathy explains a result, it does not excuse that result.

 

[trappedslider]

Meanwhile Gamers feel cheated by this $339 million video game after another delay: 'The greatest scam in gaming history'

 

[Morrus]

"Amoral" is a euphemism for moral apathy, when speaking of sapient people, whether individually or in groups. Moral apathy that leads to harm is willful harm. Willful harm as a continuing pattern is evil.

Moral absolutism is pretty evil.

 

[Ryujin]

They will never get paid. Then again, if management is the major shareholder, declaring bankruptcy is the right thing to do so that they can retain profits; otherwise they would have to pay share value out of their own pockets. With a loss, it's a tax write off, and reduced taxes on the profits vs capital gains.

Not never, but you're right that they hardly ever get anything. Secured creditors (banks and other lending institutions) are the first at the trough. They get paid in order of signing. Then come unsecured creditors (suppliers, customers, employees). After that come the shareholders. In my experience the secured creditors do generally drink the trough dry, with even some of them getting nothing.

I worked for a computer manufacturer that went bankrupt. One day we were all told to put down what we were doing and go to the front office, because the place was closing. It was payday. In going through the bankruptcy hearings I learnt that the owner/president of the company had put up the first $2.5M to launch the company from personal funds and had registered as a secured creditor. He was the only one who got all of his money back out of the bankruptcy.

(Except for me. I'd been working with the design engineers and the owner wanted to rehire me when he opened again, under a new name, so he paid me a portion of what I was owed. I signed receipts for that money, which the owner promptly lost. When I filed for what I was owed with the Labour Board my rep went after the owner, personally (not the limited corp.), because of personal malfeasance. He ended up having to pay me everything that I was owed, in the bankruptcy, including what I had already received due to the lost receipts. The rep said that because HE couldn't support the statement, to the gov't's satisfaction, he owed the money. Total payout was about 1.5 times what I was actually owed.)

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Eh. That one is stretched a bit thin. "I don't care, and thus didn't pay attention, and someone got hurt." is not really the same as, "I wanted to hurt you, and did so."

That isn't an accurate representation of what I said. Rather, it's, "I knew that a course of action was likely to result in harm, didn't care, and harm resulted. And then I kept engaging in that course of action, lending my effort to covering up my responsibility for the harm rather than mitigating how much harm I do."

That is willfully doing harm, even without the second sentence, and it's evil.

If you leave your campfire burning in the middle of summer in California's forests, with no one to watch it and no bucket of dirt or other way to put it out, you are morally responsible if it starts a wildfire that burns down a swath of forest, kills people and animals, and destroys whole towns.

If you bully lawmakers into passing policies that let you get away with poisoning rivers and water tables, you are morally responsible for the harm that comes from that poisoned water. Other people are also responsible, but that doesn't get you off the hook.

The idea that corporations are exempt from such moral responsibility simply because they are profit driven organizations is perhaps the most dangerous bit of nonsense in the modern world.

Moral absolutism is pretty evil.

2 things.

First, your reply is a personal attack. You're the guy in change of the damn site, for goodness sake.

Second, what I described isn't moral absolutism. A morality based in harm and reasonable expectation that a person knows an action or inaction will lead to harm, isn't absolutist. Absolutism is when someone suggests something like, "XYZ specific action are always evil, and anyone who does them is evil. Period."

Saying, willfully bringing harm to others is evil, is just ethical common sense, and inherently allows for nuance in specific cases.

hell, my post even alluded to such nuance.