crosspost from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/43675346
Alt text
The “Bro visited his friend” meme template. In panel one, a character says “hi GOG any new deals tod-” and another character, labeled with the GOG.com logo, replies with the screenshot of a mail header titled “Slavic adventures 𖥞 ꥟ ϟϟ”. In the second panel, the first character looks at the second one with a worried look on their face.
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How tf did this happen? Did some Nazi intern at the company sneak it past the PR team? Did some LLM think they were appropriate symbols to use based on scraping 4chan? Was some human really so clueless at to think that they were “cool slavic symbols” or some shit?
Probably LLM. GOG Deals newsletter never reads like human.
Some human prevented these symbols from reaching users with language set on German, though.
There’s no game titled “Slavic adventure” on GOG. Maybe OP is referring to The End of the Sun, which has runic characters in its title. OP implies the use of Black Sun and SS symbols, neither of which I was able to find in connection with the game.
Care to elaborate, OP?
this is the email that GOG sent out to advertize the game. i did not put these symbols there, they did.
Using these symbols would definitely not be ok. Is there any source on this? I’m not saying it’s not true, it just strikes me as weird that they would write “Slavic adventure” instead of the game’s actual title.
source: i got that email (and i am german)
i haven’t received the email myself, but there are many discussions of people receiving it on their forum and on reddit (as well as on social media), with different screenshots of the email in different clients.
Yeah I honestly couldn’t find those, that’s why I was hoping you could share a link
on their subreddit (there’s a reply by their rep, it doesn’t look good, they recognized what this looked like so they omitted the symbols in germany where it’s actually illegal, but left it for everyone else??? holy shit)
another one on their subreddit
thread on their forum (warning: lots of nazis on there…)
They omitted the symbols from the German-language newsletter. German users using English still received it.
Oh wow, that GOG representative trying to justify it makes even worse:
spoiler
I want to briefly address the discussion as a GOG representative. The Sowilo rune is part of my cultural and historical heritage. As a Pole, I am fully aware of both its history and the sensitivities surrounding it. Its use in this promotion was intended solely as a reference to the sun, which is central to the game being promoted.
What was displayed in several devices as doppelrune is out of our control. ᛋ was displayed as ϟ on several devices. We should pay more attention to checking it on a different systems and devices. 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.
At the same time, I do not believe that symbols with a history spanning more than a thousand years should be defined solely by their misuse in the modern history. Allowing that would mean accepting that those who corrupted these symbols now own their meaning.
As a Pole, I have every reason to treat this history with seriousness and respect. Precisely because of that, I reject any suggestion that this promotion carried an extremist message. It did not. It was a reference to the historical symbol of the sun, nothing more.
That is some weapons-grade apologetic bs. Thanks for the heads-up OP
This was noticed before distribution, and out of respect for local sensitivities, the material was not sent to the German community.
LMAOOOOO well thats a fucking insane thing to admit that casually
So they notice that it totally, unmistakably looks like an SS symbol and then they just send it out anywaysThey couldve just said “It was an automated thing” or “It was AI generated” or whatever but no, they say “we knew and we didnt give a fuck”
At least honest i guess?
german here… i too received that exact email… so sadly the rep is talking out of his ass
Interesting. I got the email without the symbols, but Im not german.
I wonder how realistic the one rune being displayed as the other on several devices is. Like, they are both unicode, and the screenshots seem to be from regular web browsers which should be pretty good at displaying it. It sounds like bullshit honestly…
4hrs ago‽
So someone in GOG is absolutely getting fired.
I like GOG because I wanted to have the games forever unlike with Steam where they COULD take it away. Sigh.
GOG sell you a license too. There’s also DRM-free games on Steam, it’s a publisher restriction.
Don’t all Steam games include Steam DRM? Which fair, is trivial to break, but it’s not DRM-free.
No, they do not. It’s something the developer/publisher of a game chooses to use.
You’re right: https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_big_list_of_DRM-free_games_on_Steam. Thanks for the info
yeaaah same… i’m massively disappointed honestly.
i’ll get my drm-free games from itch or steam i guess. and if it’s not drm-free, well, 🏴☠️
Runic symbols.
ᚢ ᚳᚪᚾ ᚢᛋᛖ ᚱᚢᚾᛁᚳ ᚹᛁᚦᚩᚢᛏ ᚱᛠᛞᛝ ᛚᛁᚳᛖ ᚠᚪᛋᚳᛁᛋᛏ.
U can use Runic wiþout readŋ like fascist.
You can also write like everyone else, but you don’t because you want to do something different. Why should you receive the benefit of a doubt, but this just simply has to be fascist writing?
Are asking me why GOG chose to make an email subject line dogwhistling Nazi iconography?
I’m asking why you’re so sure it has to be doing exactly that when GOG had no reason to be doing that and there’s no context for doing that.
I would prefer not to jump to conclusions until there is a conclusion.
Scroll up to Chloé 🥕’s exhibition of GOG’s dogwhistling apologetics. It’s pretty clear to us harmed by Nazis, and the majority of folks experienced in Nazi whistles that the subject line could have been typed extremely differently, esp. when the developers themselves admitted the Newsletter was all Gog’s doing.
Still waiting the why. It’s such a braindead move, I don’t see why they would so randomly sabotage themselves like this.
I believe it is not sabotage. They are trying to attract a specific type of customers who would be interested to play a «Slavic adventure».
It seems that they thought these target customers are Nazi-sympathisers.you were given clear evidence for the claims made, nobody is making you agree with it. its a diffrent matter if you want to continue to take the side of people whos argument boils down to, its not racist its your fault because you didnt see it the way we interpreted, thats just a bad look.
Same as all of us here. We’ll have to wait on Monday to learn why they hired a Nazi to publish this newsletter in their Boże Ciało weekend.
