They have to much influence! Why? and how the fuck did it happen?

Its because they made the forum retardedly hard to sign up for. You cant sign up with an actual email but only a temporary one, and you can only browse until you've been verified which can take months to make the user feel special. The fact that some devs use to go there makes them feel extra special but now its just a dried up husk of a forum used for marketing, not like it matters since news leaks out so soon.

It is kinda like this. "I bloody hate the slums about an hour drive on a clear traffic day away from my place. I wish I could go gun-toting killing every criminals and degenerates I see, but that is going to get me killed in about twenty ways and my organs sold in black market."

That one's on Playtonic for wimping out. When was the last time you've seen neogaf push over EA? The major players either ignore or openly ridicule them, and the only developers left posting there are z-list 3DS indie losers.

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Nah, it more like if you went there and started shooting the place up people from there would flee into your neighborhood.

It's a shill site. As in for literal shills, or "industry veterans" as they like to brag. It's actually disgusting how blatantly corporate and controlled the atmosphere is there.

they don't

some indie publisher that caved in means nothing in the bigger picture

That dog is just scared because it know that suit means it's getting raped tonight.

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This has to be fake but it's still funny.

Wasn't Neofag's claim to fame being a forum that had a lot of people in the industry posting on it and was a source for leaks?

The only tools they have is blackmailing and nagging like a bunch of kids. I'm pretty sure everybody hates them. Also reminder that Sony owns NeoGAF thanks to all the shills they have placed.

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Basically but there are plently of plebs there too.
So someone working on a game says "what do you think of x" everyone says "great idea, so innovative" because they will be banned if they say anything else and then they get to feel like they are involved in the process even though actual feedback isn't involved at all.

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Isn't NeoGaf blacklisted by a shitload of places?

Probably but I imagine that is because of all the leaks, you don't want your staff hanging out someone known for leaks.

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It used to be cool back in the day. now it's just a laughing stock of a forum

I'm gonna give you my serious answer OP.

NeoGAF started by being a really private closed community that let people create some quality that you don't usually see in game forums. In a age full of kids shitposting any game forum with fanboyism wars, NeoGAF was a bit more "adult" so people started using it a more organized easy way to get information for games and new releases.

It came to a point that even game developers would go to that forum since discussions were more relaxed and not full of babies, and by doing so NeoGAF became the point where almost all leaks would happen, new announcements, etc… This helped to make NeoGAF HUGE, and their users started to feel like an ELITE of gamers since registration to their forums was so hard (aka as shit) and the moderation was so strict.

Now however time passed and NeoGAF got full of the same kiddies they were avoiding. Moderation became a meme of himself where the elite moderators thought of themselves as gods that would shut down absolutely anything that does not go according to their views, and the game companies knowing how important the forums were (since almost all website would go there to get their news and articles) threw all their shills to make sure they could control it from inside (Sony won this war).

Now like half of the user base of NeoGAF are paid shills, the other fanboys that follow the gods moderators to anything and everything they say, where there's only ONE correct view and the rest is wrong.
The got full of SJW propaganda where fanservice is bad, gamers are sexist and cinematic games are the best. It is a good example of how and why the west developers are going to shit with their ideology and freedom is getting turned down for safe spaces.

NeoGAF right now is probably THE WORST videogame forum in the entire internet. That only lives on thanks to their previous glory, but even with that they are little by little losing steam and people is realizing how shitty they are. The proof is how there are less and less leaks and new announcements in their forums with time and companies are going to other places since they know the Sony shills will destroy anything they try to leak through NeoGAF.

Ding ding DING! That's half of their business model right there. If you want a good laugh, take a quick look at the GD board and count the Disney threads. There's never, ever a time when there isn't one on the first page.
(The other half is datamining.)

they have no influence. this one particular set of cucks decided to kneel down and gobble some neofag cock. doesn't mean the rest of the industry is going to kowtow to them although given the current state of vidya, i wouldn't be surprised if they did.

more like they thought being virtue signaling cucks would bring in the dough. too bad they didn't count on it backfiring horrendously.

Pretty much. Lot of game companies are currently learning a hard lesson about reading the market, and who really buys their games instead of just endlessly getting twisted over them and bitching about it on twitter. That's why I believe this trend will be over soon. As much as game companies love to virtue signal for goodboy points, that in no way supersedes their love of turning a profit, so I'd imagine there are already a good many directives being issued form on high about toning that shit down. SJWs don't buy games. In fact, they don't really buy enough of anything for it to really affect the bottom line profits of any industry. They're just a wall of perpetual outrage, over anything and everything.

The world has an endless stream of retards.
Being reasonable isn't human nature, it's a skill humans can acquire. And being more than what you're born as is by definition outside of the norm.

Shills are openly, officially their business model.

Is this guy an elf?