Worst business decisions ever: Version 3.0

[Abbayarra]

New store opened in a high end mall near where I live.

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There's engrish and then there's... whatever this is.

Totally normal clothing store, by the way... Nice, normal clothes. And no, the Chinese name has got jack shit to do with dreams or vampires.

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This to me appears to be a poor understanding of English. If i am not mistaken I would guess they were going for Undying Dream which would be a really cool name for a store.

Without a firm grasp of English i can see how Undying and undead could be confused.

 

[Darklyre]

It's the commercial equivalent of someone getting a Japanese kanji tattoo because it looked cool only to find out it translates to "purple horse gym."

 

[Superspleen]

If the store had clothing like what you'd find at Hot Topic, I'd actually go.

 

[Tristian Morgan]

New store opened in a high end mall near where I live.

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There's engrish and then there's... whatever this is.

Totally normal clothing store, by the way... Nice, normal clothes. And no, the Chinese name has got jack shit to do with dreams or vampires.

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Is the shop facing financial difficulties as a result of this name?
In other words, is this a bad business decision or just a funny named store?

 

[folti]

It's the commercial equivalent of someone getting a Japanese kanji tattoo because it looked cool only to find out it translates to "purple horse gym."

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Still better than one that'd say "monkey" (ex-coworker's find), or the memetical"foreign pervert" though.

 

[Atlan]

Still better than one that'd say "monkey" (ex-coworker's find), or the memetical"foreign pervert" though.

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I had a coworker who had a tattoo that read "Live is a game".

Didn't have the hear to tell him that that should have been "Life is a game"....

And in the Netherlands, the tattoo artist really should have known better.

 

[Croaker]

Wait, the guy was actively working with law enforcement, but wasn't an employee and didn't have qualified immunity by being an actual cop?

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Schlep got groomed and molested by Roblox predators. This is his way of taking back control of his life.

Also kinda dumb to not include Roblox in on this from the beginning.

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Hard to do that when Roblox is blatantly not interested.

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17:35

I mean, the thing is I've made it very, very clear to Roblox since the beginning. Give us a private line. We are open to communicate with you. We want to talk with you guys. We know a lot of these really bad actors. And the first official contact I had with them was the cease and desist letter. It's horrible from a a public image standpoint. I mean, you're killing the messenger, right? It's not like you're out there tracking these guys down with, you know, tasers and smoke guns. I mean, you're providing information to the platform to do something about it. One of the major complaints that Roblox had about me was that I was actually going to law enforcement first before sending their report just so that they would have a start to finish conversation of everything that took place.

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Should be rather easy for Roblox to disprove by providing any positive correspondence indicating that they wanted to work with Schlep prior to this engagement, right?

Or you know, they'll just keep "condos" (18+ games) without increasing moderation for anyone above 17 to keep their userbase of scum from leaving. Roblox stock is an active liability.

 

[CowboyWithHook]

If the rules of an establishment say "Dont Do X action or you will be banned from it" and you proceed to do an action that as far as they can see is exactly identical to X until they leave your establishment and its only then that it deviates? There is basically zero courts that are going to side with the person being banned regardless of if they were working with law enforcement as a trap. Actually, theres a non-zero chance it gets the person being banned in even worse trouble if they try and sue over it as they are neither deputized law enforcement AND have basically shown that they KNOW that everything they were doing while at said establishment violated the estalishment's rules. Especially since the establishment was neither consulted with nor given the chance to approve in the first place the using of their establishment as a sting operation to begin with.

Like if I was a Roblox Moderator and I randomly came across Hansen doing this sting...the guy would have been banned regardless because there is likely zero way to reasonable tell its not the real thing and the only reason it is blowing up is he made the mistake of forgetting that he is not actual law enforcement. Seriously, the guy is an idiot doing what he did.

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The problem was that Roblox refused to do anything, even when Schlep (the guy) tried to do it Roblox's way. Schlep sent evidences, in binders and emails, to Roblox and they did nothing with it.

Schlep tried to cooperate with Roblox but they literally refused to do anything. This same the company who refused to banned a user named Teddy who was known for making "Condo" games, which is a place where pedos hanged out at and even tried to make him a part of Roblox's official events despite community outcry.

They literally was about to make groomers hang out game a part of their events where thousands of children would take part. Roblox was basically enabling pedos.

And keep in mind that Schlep himself was a victim of being groomed himself and nearly killed himself because of it. Schlep wasn't being an idiot.

Edit: Also Roblox's reporting function suck. You don't know if your reports actually do anything because Roblox refuses to tell anyone.

LoL does this better, they literally tell you if a reported person is banned or not when you report someone.

Edit 2: This is made worse when Roblox CEO stated he wanted Roblox to have and allow online dating on its platform, a platform full of kids.

 

[Croaker]

Edit: Also Roblox's reporting function suck. You don't know if your reports actually do anything because Roblox refuses to tell anyone.

LoL does this better, they literally tell you if a reported person is banned or not when you report someone.

Edit 2: This is made worse when Roblox CEO stated he wanted Roblox to have and allow online dating on its platform, a platform full of kids.

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Well, let's be honest here, moderation is a shitshow. It doesn't even meet the bare minimum of preventive measures:

Roblox: Inflated Key Metrics For Wall Street And A Pedophile Hellscape For Kids – Hindenburg Research

hindenburgresearch.com

• Following years of scandals, we performed our own checks to see if the platform had cleaned up its act. As a test, we attempted to set up an account under the name 'Jeffrey Epstein'…only to see the name was taken, along with 900+ variations.
• Many were Jeffrey Epstein fan accounts, including "JeffEpsteinSupporter" which had earned multiple badges for spending time in kid's games. Other Jeff Epstein accounts had the usernames "@igruum_minors" [I groom minors], and "@RavpeTinyK1dsJE" [rape tiny kids].
• Some games seem to encourage illicit interactions, like "Public Bathroom Simulator Vibe" and "XYZ Club Vibe" with 31 million collective visits. Both are available to users who self-identify as 9+ years old, who can simulate sex in bathrooms wearing skimpy outfits.
• Other Roblox users have identified issues of simulated rape, naked users, and rampant in-game sexual harassment.
• Despite Roblox's claims of "best in the world" content moderation, our interviews with moderators show safety was largely outsourced to Asian call centers. Moderators described being paid $12 a day to review countless instances of child grooming and bullying with a limited ability to keep perpetrators off the platform permanently.

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Our Roblox Experience #2: Roblox Claims It Reviews "Every Single Image, Video, And Audio File Uploaded To Roblox"

We Quickly Encountered Images Of Male Genitalia And Obscene Speech In Roblox's "School Simulator" Game

The Game Had Registered 28.9 Million Visits And 158,000 Favorites With No Age Restrictions (Meaning It Is Open For Users Under 9 Years Old, Which Account For 21% Of Roblox's Userbase)

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Absolute disaster.

 

[CowboyWithHook]

Well, let's be honest here, moderation is a shitshow. It doesn't even meet the bare minimum of preventive measures:

Absolute disaster.

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The sad part is that the moderation used to so much better. Yeah, the fact that Roblox community was smaller and the fact it was a small company helped, but like come on.

If you did something bad, you would be banned for it, and the mods would actually interact with the community. Roblox the company was actually apart of its community.

Now, it just seems like they lost with it, relying on frankly, terrible AIs that do a horrendous job at moderating with little to no human oversight.

 

[Tristian Morgan]

Now, it just seems like they lost with it, relying on frankly, terrible AIs that do a horrendous job at moderating with little to no human oversight.

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AIs have been a corporate buzzword for the last couple of years at most, an online platform doesn't build up that level of scumminess in a couple of years. It's clearly been rotten for years at this point, and no amount of AI use is to blame for that.

 

[CowboyWithHook]

AIs have been a corporate buzzword for the last couple of years at most, an online platform doesn't build up that level of scumminess in a couple of years. It's clearly been rotten for years at this point, and no amount of AI use is to blame for that.

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What I meant was that Roblox, like YouTube, is now relying more and more on robots to moderate the sites. It doesn't help that Roblox as a whole have become more corporate once it went public on the stock market.

 

[Mook91]

That would indeed be a terrible business decision if it is what actually happened. Which it isn't.

What happened is that Maggie Kang pitched the movie to Sony (who has a first-look deal with her) who declined to fund the movie. She then took the idea to Netflix who liked it. They made an agreement with Sony to fund the production of the movie (via Sony Pictures Animation) plus up to $20 million depending on viewership. That $20 million number people are throwing around online isn't revenue, it's profit.

Would Sony have made more if they had made the movie themselves? Almost certainly but they also would have had way more risk. And the movie was a risk -- not only did they need to make a good, popular movie (which is hard) they also had to make good, popular songs (which is hard).

With hindsight Netflix made the better business decision but that doesn't make Sony's decision (which ended up netting them a risk-free $20 million) bad.

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Sony Music also decided to sell the soundtrack for a pittance to their biggest rivals because they thought it would be niche and unpopular.


Then the soundtrack blew up and basically every song getting on a Top 10 list and songs like Golden getting all the way to Top 1 where it stayed for ages.


I think this whole thing still counts.

 

[Sucal]

This is a WORST business decisions thread, not a BAD business decisions thread.

Did Sony miss the chance to make a chunk of money? Yes, it's a bad business decision.
Is Sony going out of business, having its staff arrested, or currently being shot at/cancelled/boycotted because of this?

No.

They still made some money on the deal, they just didn't make as much as they could have.

 

[NoahStratos]

Apparently, while everything with Roblox was going on, I've started to hear rumors that Minecraft is going through similar suing due to their own "illegal shit".

Both rivals are getting their asses handed to them. Oh my fucking god.

Smash Bros. fans that hated Steve are about to be vind... y'know, I'm not sure if I can actually use that word because I'd be dropping out a Illager-related pun.

 

[JustAnotherHachimanFan]

*snip of multiple red flags*

Edit 2: This is made worse when Roblox CEO stated he wanted Roblox to have and allow online dating on its platform, a platform full of kids.

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... Are we sure this guy isn't a friend of Epstein's?

Because this is starting to feel less like willful ignorance and more like subtle encouragement of the pedophilia (and other problematic aspects) going on inside Roblox.

 

[CowboyWithHook]

... Are we sure this guy isn't a friend of Epstein's?

Because this is starting to feel less like willful ignorance and more like subtle encouragement of the pedophilia (and other problematic aspects) going on inside Roblox.

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Roblox has lost 12 billion dollars as of right now.

Another key thing I want to mention. Roblox just had a livestream with its CEO and child safety officer and it basically went like this:

They were upset that Schlep informed the police's about the predators before them( even Schlep actually did, Roblox just didn't do anything until the predators get arrested), and stated that Schlep was purposely looking for and baiting people by pretending he's a child, and that due to that they compared Schlep to be like the predators he was hunting.

WTF.

They compared a victim of grooming to child predators.

 

[Croaker]

They compared a victim of grooming to child predators.

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DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender) is a common tactic for sexual offenders.

Deny grooming ever took place.
Attack the accuser, Schlep.
Reverse Schlep and the pedophile.

Favoured attack of abusers everywhere (see Collective Shout censorists and their board of 'feminists' containing rich old white men).

 

[CT17]

Would the recent Cracker Barrel rebrand count (probably not one of the worst ever but at least not a smart idea)?

 

[Jesse Lee]

Would the recent Cracker Barrel rebrand count (probably not one of the worst ever but at least not a smart idea)?

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Not really. It was a dumb decision that wasted a lot of money, it's not enough of a bad call to be considered the worst business decision.

At worst, it just shows that people are fucking sick of minimalist logos nowadays and want something with personality.

 

[Kensai]

I had a coworker who had a tattoo that read "Live is a game".

Didn't have the hear to tell him that that should have been "Life is a game"....

And in the Netherlands, the tattoo artist really should have known better.

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I dunno, maybe he really likes live service games. Which would make him a real weirdo, but hey.

 

[Athlumney]

Not really. It was a dumb decision that wasted a lot of money, it's not enough of a bad call to be considered the worst business decision.

At worst, it just shows that people are fucking sick of minimalist logos nowadays and want something with personality.

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Not even that, the backlash was because some people decided to make it political and distract people with the latest 'woke' thing destroying Murica bollocks.

 

[Atlan]

I dunno, maybe he really likes live service games. Which would make him a real weirdo, but hey.

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Did not seem like the kind of person to play much video games, tbh...

 

[Ledmonkey]

Not even that, the backlash was because some people decided to make it political and distract people with the latest 'woke' thing destroying Murica bollocks.

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The logo wasn't even the worst part of it, the interior decorating change was horrid

 

[Xero Key]

The logo wasn't even the worst part of it, the interior decorating change was horrid

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I disagree on that. At least at my local Cracker Barrel, it has more room and the colors aren't… stifling. It felt too cramped before.

But the logo was a mistake. Not just for minimalism reasons either. They changed the font to something corporate, and removed the FREAKING BARREL. Fine, remove the guy. But the titular barrel too? The balance is way off without it!