A former BioWare employee says that EA’s new management wasn’t on board with the developer’s inclusiveness.
Is that the game where you can have sex with an insect alien and a rock monster? Sure glad they removed a flag or people would think sex between humans was normal 🤡
developers were asked to remove a specific flag from a presentation video for “looking too much like the LGBTQIA+ flag,” in order “not to offend.”
Well, they failed. Because that offends me.
But why buy a studio known for inclusive storytelling, presumably to profit from it, and then kill the thing they’re known for? Or was this an investment in culture war?
EA bought BioWare well before this new managment (Saudis) jumped in. EA used to not care because inclusivity was just another way to sell a game, thus BioWare could be gay as fuck. Now there’s a conservative slant to it and BioWare is (even when they’re making bad games) an incredibly gay studio so this was just bound to happen.
Ugh fking saudis…
Truly the desert’s nicest trailer park
For context for any viewers who are wondering why @[email protected] deleted his posts, he was saying this:
- that the Pride flag has no symbolic meaning, but is “just a flag”
- that because the Pride Flag is not significant to @[email protected], it therefore has no meaning (which they repeated numerous times)
- that the removal of a symbol does not symbolize the removal of the thing that symbol symbolizes
- that gay people are given equal welcome in bars instead of being discriminated against
- that any change without impact on the gameplay has no meaning
- that censorship before the release of the game is not censorship and has no meaning
If you were wondering why he has so many downvotes, that is why. :)
There is wrong characterization here. I’m just fed up with the bad faith argumentation. Its just a waste of time. And its clear that people don’t accept any other opinion. Have fun with your witch hunt.
Wrong characterization? I saw your bullshit before you deleted it and these things are literally what you said. God, you suck at your propaganda job
Too bad you deleted your own words, otherwise you’d have an easier time convincing people.
This was not a witch hunt. I am merely providing the context of what you said because you are trying to skirt outside of public criticism by deleting your comments.
You made a fallacious claim that the removal of the Pride Flag had no meaning. You literally said it was “just a flag”. You literally said the removal was meaningless because it had no significance to you. You literally said that the removal of that symbol does not symbolize the removal of LGBTQIA+ rights. You literally said that gay people are equally welcome in bars. You literally said that changes that don’t impact gameplay or story have no meaning. You literally said that censorship before the release of the game was “not censorship” and that it has no meaning.
I have not misquoted you. If you feel like your own words paint you in a negative light, perhaps you shouldn’t have said them.
Yeah, it’s Saudi Arabia, they are Islamic and not quite as permissive as USA.
There’s no pride parade in Saudi Arabia or any Islamic state. You keep your head down and keep it to yourself or you get thrown off a roof.
Yup, white christians here in the south used to be the same until the secular and non-whites changed the law. You think the racist homophobes here at home are gone? You know sundown towns still exist? Lots of secular people in Saudi Arabia you aren’t aware of, though. Su
Did white christians from the south buy EA?
Turns out conservatism isn’t tied to one religion. But to paint all Arabs as religious and closed minded is like saying all white people are religious and closed minded. Lots of crazy people in all countries of all ethnicities it turns out.
At the current pace, the US will catch up soon though!
This is why foreign countries shouldn’t be allowed to own companies. Worker and citizen owned companies or gtfo
Didn’t take long for Saudia Arabia to show its whole ass
It has been out the whole time. I’m not sure what people were expecting.
Of course it wasn’t. They’re owned by SA now. Used to jokingly refer to them as Evil Assholes, but they seem to want to really earn that moniker.
im pretty sure most games already have to do this for their release in saudi arabia. the spider-man “mod” that removed those flags was just changing the map to the saudi arabia version
fuck ea
i mean they were bought by Saudi Arabia(96%) and that country is not too fond of LGBTQ
they arent too fond of heterosexuality either, considering the recent execution of a husband and wife for the sin of a forehead kiss.
they think forehead kisses are bad???
Married Couple from Bangladesh, He gave her a kiss on the forehead at mecca in appreciation to god for bringing them together.
Saudi Arabia declared it public indecency and executed them for it.
a whole ass execution, wtf?
also i think its stupid that is forbidden.It’s kinda weird that the US complains so much about theocracy in Iran, but is eager to do business with Saudi Arabia, which is even worse.
(Of course it has nothing to do with theocracy. It’s about oil.)
two whole ass executions.
thats even worse
Public displays of affection, yes. The Saudi Arabian government is very oppressive.
true
Can’t spell “Saudi Arabia” without “SA!”
Forehead kisses can’t get a woman pregnant and are therefore gay.
lol
imHo, these companies are not problem on their own. Company follows money, companies provide product that sells more. They do research, how many happy queers will pay for a game with flags, how many will ignore game if there wont be any flag, vs how many bigots will not buy with flag. And queers are commonly losing on statistics, sadge. Ideology or supporting LGBTQ+ may not be even considered at company meetings, but money data only.
Sure, would be awesome, if some companies would support queers and do a slap, do a change against bigotry. Enough of such small details, optional texture at some optional costume, and gae visibility could be a norm, no more shocking no more disgus for norms near queers, just a norma… yet, that’s not exactly what big game companies are there for…
The issue isn’t just about a texture or a flag—it’s the corporate censorship and what it signals. If management is already stepping in to scrub a presentation video to avoid “offending” corporate masters, it makes you wonder what kind of creative compromises are happening behind closed doors during actual game development.
it’s more than corporate censorship, it’s theocratic censorship.
“it’s not x {em dash} it’s y” hmm
Real people use em dashes. That is a common place in human writing to use an em dash, or it would not have become a trend in the averaging that is LLM-generated text.
We cannot assume this comment was written by a bot. It was short and only used one em dash in a normal place.
- They did it right now which is well after the fact was established, on Lemmy out of all places where demographics obviously lean towards people that know this.
- It’s mostly transcriptions of physical books and academic papers rather than people who digitally use the right alt key.
I use the em dash a lot. The codepoint is 2014 for the em dash and 2015 for the en dash. It’s quite easy to remember.
The em dash is incredibly easy to access and use on mobile, so there’s no need to memorize an alt code or copy-paste it from the internet or whatever.
No alt code, you hold… Actually, I’m not going to say that for the good of the world.
Yet another reason why we need to move the world off of its oil dependency.
I predicted it when EA sold out to Saudi Arabia.
I think people overblow this a bit. Personally don’t care if there is a LGBTQ flag or not. And don’t think it matters, because it has no impact. It would be more worrying to me, when changing the integrity of story, characters or gameplay in example. Who cares if there is some texture that looked similar to a LGBTQ flag and had to be removed? I certainly don’t care (wouldn’t if they added it too BTW, zero impact).
a .ml user arguing in bad faith again. figures.
I think i get what you’re saying and i also don’t care, but when a dev puts a flag in and people start getting weird about it then I start caring a lot.
I’m not queer, but I find throwing trans and rainbow flags around is a great way to get fascists and bigots and otherwise miserable people to out themselves.
It would be a problem if this was in real life, not in a game.
Then it’s all equivalent. We agree nothing in the game is materially more important than anything else—it’s all just pixels and noises which trigger experiences in a player.
In the context of a video game it’s important to the video game and the people who make it and play it. In that context it’s a problem.
When it comes to a flag, yes. As long as the gameplay, story and character visions and the interactions are not compromised. It’s not all white and black.
And you don’t see this as a surface level indicator that there’s likely a lot more meddling going on?
As said, I’m not speculating or judging anything else than the removal of a flag. I personally think removing the flag doesn’t matter at all. I am not talking about ANYTHING ELSE.
If the developers chose to remove it, that’s not a big deal. If they just decided “Eh, this is a fictional world in the future, there’ll be different symbols. It’s too on-the-nose to have the exact flag”, good for them. No big deal.
Nobody is upset about it being removed from a player’s perspective.
The issue that people have is the developers are being censored. And specifically, what’s being censored is something that represents a group of people are actively being attacked and erased in parts of the world.
I hope that this explanation helps you see the situation differently. There’s nobody who’s upset because “I wanted to see the flag”. It’s bigger than that.
If it was more than a flag removal, I would understand the issue. But it literally changes nothing.
It’s more than a flag removal by having deeper meaning than a flag removal.
As well, the game was cancelled. There may have been more censorship to come.
Just like rainbow crosswalks the flag itself isn’t that important, it’s the fact they’re being removed that’s the problem.
Not for me. (Edit: As long as they don’t change the actual functionality to be LGBT. I just say I don’t care about the flag itself, as long as we can fuck whoever we want. And they seem not to change that. It’s really just a flag…)
You don’t see the removal request as an indicator that there might have been similiar attempts during actual development?
Which removal requests are you talking about, if not about the flag?
Of course I mean that request.
That’s not what is reported and is something you read into and we don’t know. If there are other requests, then its a different topic. I am strictly talking about the flag, nothing else here (as it is reported).
You’re either dense or not acting in good faith.
Not really surprised given the instance you’re from.
Wat are you accusing me off?
.ml usually sucking cock on Putin and Xi, two leaders/dictators known for their inclusiveness of the lgbtq+ folk
Oh, I was not aware of that. And I am not against LGBTQ+ people and I’m also not for Putin or China. And to be honest I never saw such comments in our community.
I’m just saying, that I personally don’t care about the flag itself in the game, as long as the functionality itself is preserved. I don’t want to have a compromised game, but a flag is not compromised to me.
Good. But this isn’t about you, it’s representation of minorities that they’re slowly removing and undoing years of blood, sweat and tears shed by people willing to fight.
