I would absolutely say that having the means to complain does not inherently give you the right to complain.
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.
Regardless of knowing what's possible, this is the origin of "the customer is always right in matters of taste".
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.
The wrinkle is zero-context internet, where there's little ability to tell what respect someone is due, which leads to people who aren't due it assuming they should get it (because they also don't know what others complaining have done).
Which I guess boils down to "Don't listen to the internet."
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'.
History whitewashing. The right to vote was won/taken by people who fought for it. “The state” (?) then doesn’t get credit for “granting” it, as if the state was the from-nothing cause.
That kind of nonsense might be how some theoriticians discuss such things. But no normal person cares about that.
Excuse me, but you don't earn yourself the right to vote by fighting for it until you take it. However it came about in law, it is granted to you. Whether it was fought for or not, your forefathers do not come back from the grave and allow you to have it after you pass some ritual test -- the state grants it to you when you turn a certain age. In fact, voting would be completely pointless if there were no 'state' to grant it. Making this into some sort of weird history lesson and berating "the state" (?) is not helpful.
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.