I think they are talking specifically about complaining though, not about anything in general
Right is earned through investment.
A creator invests a substantial amount of time and effort into something.
A complainer can invest no time or effort into something.
And specific to the gaming community, there's a distinction between investing consumption time (e.g. playing) and creation time (e.g. modding or building).
I'd allow that playing confers substantial rights ("I've played this game over 1,000 hours and I think..."), but those rights should never be confused with creator rights.
Which is what makes amateur game criticism so toxic to me ("I can't do what you do, nor have any interest in investing the effort, but let me tell you how to spend your time to do what I want").
Especially in the performance-limited era of Half Life, most gamers didn't know a damn thing about the boundary of the possible.
The ability to complain doesn't need to be earned, only the respect itself needs to be earned.
Which I guess boils down to "Don't listen to the internet."
You don't have to have invested in creation to know what you like and you don't. Claiming that the creators are the only ones who understand things enough to critique them is vanity and is toxic to projects.
Every time I've seen project leaders talk like that it's been a disaster. Jensen Harris et. al used that language to dismiss feedback about the Windows 8 Star Screen, for example.
Rights are absolutely not earned, they are granted. You do not earn the right to vote, or to have legal protection. A right is granted either by the state, by society, or by 'god'.
That kind of nonsense might be how some theoriticians discuss such things. But no normal person cares about that.
I didn’t say that I earned it.
> Making this into some sort of weird history lesson and berating "the state" (?) is not helpful.
Weird? It’s about the causal origin of rights, i.e. history.
Weird philosophy lessons on “rights” are not helpful.