What…what the hell?
On further research, I had no idea CD Projekt Red sold GoG Games. CD Projekt sold GOG to its original co-founder, Michał Kiciński, in December 2025 for approximately $25.2 million. Did they go full Nazi after that or were they always suspect?
Either way, I’m downloading what I bought over the years and closing my account. No way I want to be anywhere near anything associated with Nazis.
Update: Downloaded my games, closed my account.
How many layers of people did this go through? Between their history of transphobia and now this, they are painting a pretty bad picture of themselves
I’m not aware of their history of transphobia, could you share an article talking about it?
Of course! https://www.polygon.com/2018/10/23/18015434/gog-twitter-wontbeerased-hashtag/
https://kotaku.com/cyberpunk-2077-tweets-transphobic-joke-studio-apologiz-1828502562
I included CD Projekt in there since GoG is owned by them
- Co-opting a hashtag that was used for trans solidarity:
“Classic PC Games #WontBeErased on our watch. Yeah, how’s that for some use of hashtags.”
- Suggestive in-game ad:
The female figure in one of those advertisements very clearly has a penis. The ad is for a soft drink called ChroManticore that tastes of “16 flavours you’d love to mix.” The copy encourages you to “mix it up,” an apparent reference to the trans model in the poster.
- Assume gender ‘joke’:
“Did you just assume their gender,” the tweet said. The account was responding to a fan saying that they wanted more from the “guys” at Gamescom.
To me these seem much tamer than sending nazi symbols via email tbh
The second one is the opposite of transphobic
Holy hell, this does not look like an accident. This combination of runes does not just happen. Whoever did this at the company thought they could get away with it.
It sounds like they knew the most obvious one, from the first apology. Though they did leave that in anyway (emphasis added):
What was displayed in several devices as doppelrune is out of our control. ᛋ was displayed as ϟ on several devices (might display for you differently here as well just letting you know). 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.
“We noticed it was some nazi shit but we did it anyway, except in Germany where it’s illegal.” Pretty wild defense.
I would bet my last donut that the screwup has something to do with AI generating at least part of their email content.
Doesn’t matter if it was originally added by an LLM (AI doesn’t exist) or not. They stated they knew what it looked like and that’s why they didn’t send it out in Germany. That makes them fully responsible and aware of the message they were sending
Sorry, I missed where I stated that it mattered.
