Tomorrow is election day over here in the States, so I wanted to talk about a tangentially related topic:

“Stop complaining and just vote with your wallet.”

Sometimes I wonder whether people understand how voting works. Even if we assume that not voting (i.e. not buying a game) counts as a No vote in any meaningful sense, a single vote in isolation is functionally irrelevant. Beyond that, your No vote is indistinguishable from the same No vote from someone who simply can’t buy the game until the next payday. Or the person who never realized the game was coming out. In other words, your No is actually a Potential Yes. There is no “other person” you can vote for instead, no other means of actually expressing why you voted in the manner you did other than actually talking about it.

All of this is besides the extremely relevant fact that if I spend time on a soapbox complaining about something, and I convince other people to (also) not buy that something, the size of the wallet I am voting with has increased exponentially. Not voting is meaningless; conversely, removing Yes votes is priceless. Your opinions, positive or negative, have currency only when you voice them. So get out there and get dirty.

Anyone telling you to be quiet and simply vote with your wallet is actually getting you to vote with theirs.