From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action


So, the GOG marketing team is at it again. This time, they sent out an
email advertising a game and used some Nazi iconography.* Oops.

Now, as both GOG and the advertised game are quick to claim, the runes
used in the email do have long historical precedent for Slavic culture
where they were used prior to the Nazi's co-opting the runes. It's
like how the Swastika has a history before Adolf and his goons ruined
it for everyone. And the game is a fantasy title based in Slavic
history, so runes aren't out of place.

But still, that historical precedent is greatly exceeded by Nazis
-both historical and current- using those symbols and ignoring the
associations those runes have now is pretty stupid. I could /maybe/
forgive their inclusion in the game (depending on how they're used)
but it's a bad look to use it in a marketing email. All the more so
since the company ignored the warning messages they got from their
German QA team

The thing is, it's not really the email itself that's the problem. I
can totally understand something like that slipping by, especially if
you yourself aren't immersed in neo-Nazi/white supremacist nonsense
and aren't aware of the connection yourself. The real problem is that
--once again-- GOG's marketing team is showing itself to be completely
clueless and out of their depth. No, they haven't been regularly
pushing Nazi ideograms, but they've repeatedly made bone-headed moves
that are almost as bad. Like selling DRM-encumbered games on a store
famously anti-DRM. Or trying to force US tipping culture onto their
storefront. Or using obvious (and bad) AI art and then denying it
(until they were proven wrong). Or probably a dozen other goofs that
made the company look bad and they were forced to publicly apologize
for their unforced error.

The Nazi ideogram thing isn't the end of the world, but it --and the
repeated goofs by the company-- make it really hard to recommend GOG
over its competitors. I like GOG. I like what they stand for (well,
not the Nazi thing, obviously, but their stance on no DRM and
preserving old games? I'm all for that).

But the company looks like it's run by a bunch of fools thanks to
problems like these.





* Oops indeed. https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/we-made-a-series-of-mistakes-gog-apologise-for-emailing-nazi-symbols-to-people-in-newsletter-about-slavic-fantasy-game


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