Duuude... One day I was walking, and I found this big log. And I rolled the log over, and underneath was this tiny little stick. And I was like... "that log had a child"!

Principles don't feed kids. Principles are nice, but selling out becomes necessary when you have children to feed.

If we were to boycott every company that's had a shady or dishonest dealing in the past, we'd never buy anything again.

It's not a lack of dignity, it's common sense and realization that this is just how things are. Big companies do crappy things, and I can 100% guarantee you that not enough people are going to care to make an impact unless a superior competitor is presented.

Corporation mafia, nothing new, a typical capitalism phenomenom. Ugly.

This is not the world. This is our society. And our society, is the way we all do it.
Think about it. What is the society? The society is you, is me, is all of us.
Every each one of us is a part which composes our society which is simply the gathering of all of us.
So our society is the way we all do it. Because our society is us all.
It is simple, really. The way you are, is up to you. Right? The same goes for our society. The way our society is, is up to us all.
We can make a fair society if we all want it.
The reason why our society is so unfair and merciless, is because this way profits to those who took advantage of this way for rising to the top and remain over others who are victims of this way.
Those selfish individuals of our society don't want a fair and balanced society because injustice profits them.
But we can make them fall of the top if we all want it and cooperate.
They know it. Those who are at the top and enjoy to be over others know that we could make them fall if we all wanted it and cooperated.
That is why they push us to compete against each other. A french saying says "Diviser pour mieux régner.". In english, it would translate into "To divide for better reign.". That means that ruling people is easier if they are divided.
That is why those who have been ruling our society have been pushing competitive spirit.
They push us to compete against each other starting when we are children at school.
At school, we are evaluated, judged, given scores, ranks, the 1st of the class, the 2nd of the class, until the last of the class.
They establish a hierarchy from our childhood at school. They evaluate us, they give us a value, a rank, tell us who is better than us and who is not as good as us, who is over us and who is under us, tell us that the best will success in life while the worst will fail their live, then making us want to be the best, making us see others like rivals, competitors, obstacles to our success, ennemies.
School teaches us to be competitive. Then after school, there is the work market. And there again, we have to be better than others. In order to be chosen for a job. In order to be promoted and rise in the society. In order to become more considered and more important.
And we are so busy to make sure that we are better than others that we don't think of cooperating with each other to make a better society.
So our society doesn't change. It remains unfair and merciless. It keeps profiting to a few selfish individuals who take advantage of this way while most suffer.
These selfish individuals to the top of our society know that if we all want it and cooperate, we can make them fall from the top and change the society.
That is why they push us to be competitive early from our childhood using school as a conditioning center to make us all what they want that we are.
The truth of our society is that those who rule it at its top fear us. They fear us because they know that we are more powerful than them when we are united.
So no. Our society is not the way it is because it has to be this way. Other ways are possible and it is up to us all to make our society go the way we wish it goes. ;-)
Only if they don't have ethics.

All we are is dust in the wind, dude.

You're right. And this is why it is up to us, customers, to say to company: "We are not going to buy your products if you have no ethics.".
If customers don't buy anymore, then company goes bankruptcy. So company has no choice but take into consideration what customers say.
And this is why as customers, we have the power to defend developers by threatening publishers of boycott and bankruptcy if they don't take care of developers.
We also have the power to reward societies who take care of their employees by choosing to buy their products rather than unethic societies products.
Customers have power to make societies wealth or bankruptcy just by buying or not buying.
That is what I tried to explain: In a society where money is power, to buy or not to buy is the question. ;-)

I like how OP is totally for boycotting Beth, while the author of the video linked specifically states this won't affect his perception of Arkane's Prey.

Don't say that. You'll give fortune a heart attack.

Interesting. What movie does it come from?
I agree. We all are dust in the infinite universe.
But this is not the point here.
I was talking about our society only.
I was talking abour what we all are at the scale of our society only.
What we are at the scale of time and space, is another topic.
But the sentence "All we are is dust in the wind, dude." sums it up pretty well. :-3
Fair enough. But I suggest you to check at what I answered to the author of the video for this matter. ;-)

If true it was a dirty move by Bethesda. However, I don't really want to punish one of my favorite developers, Arkane, for Bethesda's sin.

Personally, I was pretty excited for Prey (2017). Hearing what the game SHOULD have been, really makes me bitter, but hearing what it WILL be still excites me (though I'm not big on horror).

All I can do is add another entry to the "Dick moves pulled off by ZeniMax Media" list, and go about my gaming ways, maybe griping about it from time to time. What's sad is that the majority of people don't care enough about such things to make any difference. It's usually only really transparent problems, and even then the outrage manages to do fuck all most of the time. I guess accepting it is the norm, but I don't think we should be silent about it either.

Sad but true... Sad but all too true...

Incidentally, ZeniMax are still being assholes right now, so hating them is actually totally reasonable.

Well, I've always thought Bethesda sucked, so I wasn't planning on buying the new Prey anyway.
Still, it was an interesting video.

Actually that made no sense what so ever. What is the issue here? What did people actually do?

I understand. But do you feel comfortable with the fact that if you buy PREY, you will reward Bethesda for having sabotaged Prey 2 which was going to be awesome and which was almost ready to be released out of greed?
Moreover, did you also read how Bethesda used dirty means to own Arkane?
Do you realize that each time that you buy an Arkane game since Arkane got eaten by Bethesda, you reward Bethesda which has been dirty to one of your favourite developers to own it?
You love Arkane and you don't want to punish them for Bethesda sin? I understand that well.
Then create a topic in gaming forums and ask to players-mates: "If Arkane takes the risk to leave dirty Bethesda and launch a crowdfunding to start a new studio freed from Bethesda, will you help them and give a donation?".