A bit of a follow up to my last question here.

[Retro]

I'm sure some of you guys saw my question about watching the movie Trainspotting which had a scene where a dog was agitated, but now those thoughts have extended to piece of media that had more cruelty involved in it, and the ethics of enjoying that piece of media.

I've become quite a fan of the Devil May Cry series. I love the characters, I love the gameplay, and recently I've been thinking of writing some fanfiction of the series. But I do remember that before the game released, Capcom sold replicas of the main character's jackets for thousands of dollars. Now in the game, all of the characters are wearing some kind of leather (which doesn't particularly bother me since it isn't real) so naturally, the jackets they sell are going to be leather as well which probably is actual leather.

I was quite saddened when I found out that a game series that I had grown to love also had some form of animal cruelty in it. Especially since the series is about holding on to empathy and protecting your humanity.

So my question is, am I still supporting cruelty if I continue to play the series? Obviously, I'm not going to buy any of the cosplays or replicas of the jackets which would be directly supporting and paying for an animal to be killed, but am I supporting their actions just by playing and buying the games? Should I stick to just watching cutscenes on YouTube?

[aroneous]

So my question is, am I still supporting cruelty if I continue to play the series? Obviously, I'm not going to buy any of the cosplays or replicas of the jackets which would be directly supporting and paying for an animal to be killed, but am I supporting their actions just by playing and buying the games? Should I stick to just watching cutscenes on YouTube?

That's an interesting question. Overall, I would say don't worry about it too much. Even if the game developers were serial killers who used the dead bodies of their victims in their promotional materials, your personal enjoyment of the game probably has very, very little to do with their unethical behavior and the mindset behind that. If they weren't making video games, there's a good chance that they would be supporting/promoting animal abuse in other ways -- it just happens to be the case that they make video games that you like. For this kind of "boycott" to be successful, you'd have to fundamentally change someone else's behavior through a very indirect means, which is almost always misled. You'd have much better (though probably still not much) luck simply sending them email telling them why you don't agree with what they're doing and otherwise trying more directly to convince them to be vegan.

If you try to restrict yourself like this, you'll very quickly run out of things to enjoy in life. For instance, I recently had the morbid curiosity to watch this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mo5q6Z7FET8
Should I lose sleep over the fact that I've contributed to the engagement with this video, possibly encouraging the creator to make more (and now sharing it with even more people on here)? And should I stop watching Youtube videos entirely, because any engagement with the platform indirectly supports people who produce content like this? I don't think so, any more than I should feel bad about reacting with shock to witnessing someone kicking a dog on the street, when that person is doing so specifically because they take pleasure in seeing how people react. My reaction encourages them to do more, sure, but whether or not I did so has little bearing on the fact that that person is a piece of crap who is going to continue to do crappy things.