Amazon Games’ New World launched in closed beta last week. When they aren’t having their expensive GPUs melted by the massively multiplayer online role-playing game, users may also be treated to some anti-Amazon truth-spitting courtesy of a player curiously named AmazonOfficial.
When Lulu Chiba isn’t working as the community director at both Aggro Crab Games (Going Under) and Eggnut Games (Backbone), she’s treating her over 80,000 Twitter followers to a wonderful feed of general musings and hilarious shitposts on the rest of the video game industry. Her latest work of art, posted earlier this morning, is all about what she’s been up to in New World since joining the beta.
“Whenever I have the chance to name a character as an online ID, I always go for whatever I think they might have overlooked or banned and see what is allowed,” Chiba told Kotaku via email. “To my surprise, both AmazonOfficial and AmazonSupport were still up (so were TwitterOfficial, TwitchSupport, and many others).”
Upon discovering this oversight, Chiba scooped up the name AmazonOfficial on every New World server, and has since been using this moniker to spread the reality about Amazon’s products and the heinous working conditions to which it subjects workers. These tidbits include the fact that Amazon’s Alexa devices are always listening to you and that employees are often forced to pee in water bottles during shifts.
My personal favorite is Chiba’s suggestion that early New World adopters should just play Final Fantasy XIV instead.
“I’m not worried about getting banned from a game,” Chiba said. “I don’t plan to play more than a beta. So far, people have been on the joke and ask how to brew some more potions, which is easy: just pee in bottles like dozens of workers have to do at Amazon.”
Amazon’s billionaire owner Jeff Bezos recently made headlines thanks to his suborbital “space flight,” a publicity stunt that news outlets across the world covered with uncritical and sometimes fawning praise. They, of course, ignored the fact that this little jaunt was funded entirely on the backs of the thousands of workers whose labor Bezos has exploited for decades, but I guess you can’t let reality get in the way of oohing and ahhing over the big, metallic penis replacement.
“Maybe the game is fun and I’m being way too cynical,” Chiba added. “I will let a few months go by to fully embrace my role-playing as AmazonOfficial when the dev team confirms the game doesn’t brick GPUs!”