Yeah I’m still pretty concerned about that whole event but it seems like everyone has just forgotten about it.
I could have forgiven the initial email as a rogue nazi intern but their official response being “we made sure not to send it to Germans and its on you all for seeing nazi symbols as nazi symbols” is pretty fucking problematic. Also before anyone defends them as just being pagan symbols, the ones they chose to use were both modern creations by nazi germany
I definitely agree that using those innocuous Unicode characters in the way they did was someone’s subtle attempt at evoking Nazi imagery, but the whole Germany part of this story is meaningless. Germany is known for having excessive language restrictions, to the point where every marketing department has their standard library of phrases and whatnot to not use in Germany. They are used to making substitutions for the German market to swap out genuinely innocuous phrases simply because they have a different connotation in Germany or whatever. As far as we can tell, that was just yet another piece of marketing material that went through some automated regex filter for German subscribers and no one thought twice about it after seeing that fact.
… I also recognize that placing two such runes next to each other could create an unfortunate association with symbols used by the Nazi regime. This was noticed before distribution, and out of respect for local sensitivities, the material was not sent to the German community.
They knew and actively chose to not send it to the country that criminalizes Nazi imagery. To me the Germany stuff is the most damning part.
Yeah 100%. Their response to the event is pretty much where all of my feelings come from on the subject. They explicitly state they knew they were releasing literal nazi iconography and then explicitly chose to put it out where it wouldn’t get them in legal trouble.
Not only that but IIRC they actually changed the original game dev’s marketing material to use the symbols without the devs even knowing.
It’s all pretty fucking damning and it makes me incredibly sad
That was about their German language newsletter though. They have separate, localised newsletters for several markets, which I’d assume are manually translated. Also, as a native German speaker, I really don’t think it’s all that different than other European language regions regarding sensitivities.
Yeah I’m still pretty concerned about that whole event but it seems like everyone has just forgotten about it.
I could have forgiven the initial email as a rogue nazi intern but their official response being “we made sure not to send it to Germans and its on you all for seeing nazi symbols as nazi symbols” is pretty fucking problematic. Also before anyone defends them as just being pagan symbols, the ones they chose to use were both modern creations by nazi germany
For anyone who’s not up to date: https://www.pcgamer.com/games/gog-apologizes-for-emailing-nazi-runes-to-its-followers/
I definitely agree that using those innocuous Unicode characters in the way they did was someone’s subtle attempt at evoking Nazi imagery, but the whole Germany part of this story is meaningless. Germany is known for having excessive language restrictions, to the point where every marketing department has their standard library of phrases and whatnot to not use in Germany. They are used to making substitutions for the German market to swap out genuinely innocuous phrases simply because they have a different connotation in Germany or whatever. As far as we can tell, that was just yet another piece of marketing material that went through some automated regex filter for German subscribers and no one thought twice about it after seeing that fact.
From their reddit post in trying to cover up:
They knew and actively chose to not send it to the country that criminalizes Nazi imagery. To me the Germany stuff is the most damning part.
Yeah 100%. Their response to the event is pretty much where all of my feelings come from on the subject. They explicitly state they knew they were releasing literal nazi iconography and then explicitly chose to put it out where it wouldn’t get them in legal trouble.
Not only that but IIRC they actually changed the original game dev’s marketing material to use the symbols without the devs even knowing.
It’s all pretty fucking damning and it makes me incredibly sad
That was about their German language newsletter though. They have separate, localised newsletters for several markets, which I’d assume are manually translated. Also, as a native German speaker, I really don’t think it’s all that different than other European language regions regarding sensitivities.
Their marketing team was warned that there was some offense images and it would stir trouble in Germany.
Rather than say, “Oh shit this will look bad.” They said, “Oh let’s just change it for Germany.”
Do you not understand the root issue?
It always amazes me when people from anarchist servers bend over backwards to make excuses for for-profit private companies.