Fighter

Whenever someone calls the availability of a thing "problematic" or decides which opinions are not ok to be heard they are treating people with contempt. Because what they are really saying is you're too stupid to make sense of things on your own, you still need mommy to teach you right and wrong. Wait what...? If you've got any pretence to being a journalist and someone important says something or someone who is got enough public interest. You suck it up and do your job. You can question but it is I and not you who will decide the worth of an idea. What you don't do is collude to blacklist people for having the "bad" opinions. Period.

Absolutely. They can do as they goddamn please as you say. And it pleases them to have poor ethics and be biased a-holes.

It's actually the first time I even hear about some woman's job being threatened. But hey I care about ethics and I've used the same hashtag I must be guilty... I guess I also missed when GG took a collective vote and arrived at a consensus on supporting harassment... Must have been in-between everyone saying they don't approve of such things.

And who the hell appointed them the arbiters of worthy opinions vs. unworthy? Regardless they are not a platform, they are multiple platforms and should not be colluding on a common narrative.

Then you should address that to those specific individuals and not project that bull**** onto everyone.

He is so completely wrong. Making an experience both compelling and critical of what you're doing is a great way to make you think about it. Again he thinks games should be more mature but wants to treat people like children who are incapable of introspective examination of why something can be bad yet an exciting fantasy.

That's a good point.

That's the most coherent evidence of collusion that I've seen come out of GameJournoPro list. They are colluding to black list someone, no debate about it. Regardless of who the guy is or what he did (and I know nothing about him) this is unethical and a dangerous precedent. There are other examples that may not include undeniable evidence like emails but are pretty obvious. TFYC and those indie devs that are active in GG.

Emily Ratajkowski

Free speech means all speech including ugly speech. But having skimmed through the accusations and the response I can see that it is a similar issue to for example what's going on in Ukraine. It's Eastern Europe and the label Nazi is being thrown around very liberally, sometimes rightly, sometimes wrongly. I doubt someone named "f*cknovideogames" knows what the hell they are talking about.

There is definitely a debate to be had on whether it is more glorifying to have violence straight forward or sweetened by being righteous or "satirical".

Listen to TotalBiscuit's video on the matter. I trust his judgement more than that agenda driven blog with a very telling name "f*cknovideogames".

Got to say this is some lucky timing for these devs. Right when these issues are at a peak. Could only top that if the game was ready to ship now. Like I said before whoever got it banned and all the outraged out there have given this game a purpose it did not have before. Now most people that are going to be playing it will be because it's a middle finger to the would be morality police.

SimCity 2000 is free on Origin. I've got about 4-5 games for free now including Crusader: No Remorse and DA:O. Origin isn't so bad.

Bruce?

I am genuinely surprised.

Ascension. They made all that potential for great sci-fi look like a cop show of the common variety.

Well congrats to all the moralisers out there who took a game about pointless slaughter which didn't have a point and created a much more tolerable purpose for it out for thin air. As a metaphor for saying, "Fawk your PC nonsense". Ironically partially proving the developers right when they did that silly interview where they said games are too PC these days.

I will give you that. Yes, it's possible Valve did this because Valve doesn't like it. I do not find this likely. It is the atmosphere we live in. Is it just the game's media? No, I don't think so. But it is the self appointed moral arbiters that made this atmosphere.

Sure... The predictably bad press it will get has nothing to do with it. And a good reception from players would get it on Steam, right? Fat chance. It was taken down because of the offensive subject matter more likely to dodge bad PR than anything else. And they would not bring it back even if popular because of how the journo moral police would react.

Exactly. There will never be great works of art when you restrict what people are allowed to try.

And what was the complaint? "This game that I will never buy or have to play myself should be denied to other people that may want to buy it." Why exactly? No one denies that Valve can do these things. But giving A SMALL MINORITY the importance and power to decide what choices other individuals are allowed to have is an atrocious decision. And it is not even about Hatred specifically, it's the principle. It is the slippery slope that companies that are nearly monopolies should not enter as it is the road to censorship. And before anyone even starts with this: It is irrelevant if it would be censorship by definition when the practical outcome may be the same.