A former BioWare employee says that EA's new management wasn't on board with the developer's inclusiveness.

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[–] 45 points 1 week ago (39 children)

Just like rainbow crosswalks the flag itself isn’t that important, it’s the fact they’re being removed that’s the problem.

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  • [–] 25 points 1 week ago (26 children)

    You don't see the removal request as an indicator that there might have been similiar attempts during actual development?

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  • [+] -10 points 1 week ago (26 children)
  • [–] 10 points 1 week ago* (25 children)

    Of course I mean that request.

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  • [–] 17 points 1 week ago (24 children)

    You're either dense or not acting in good faith.

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  • [+] -7 points 1 week ago (24 children)
  • [–] 11 points 1 week ago* (21 children)

    There is evidence, you just chose to ignore it. You want proof by pointing at instances in the final game, which will never exist, but the burden of proof rests on you just the same.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 week ago (8 children)

    as long as the game is intact

    Well, the game is canceled so are you done defending bigotry now?

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  • [–] 8 points 1 week ago (7 children)
    1. Yes, you are.
    2. The gameplay, story, characters, and interactions are not longer intact. The game is canceled.
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  • [–] 7 points 1 week ago (6 children)

    In denying the political and social significance of this clearly bigoted move by EA, you are defending bigots. That's no hallucination. Then again, of course a .ml user would argue in bad faith.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 week ago (5 children)

    Do you deny that denial of the political and social significance of this political action taken because of bigotry is a defense of bigotry? If so, you are relying on fallacy.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (4 children)

    That is a non-answer to my question. I asked if you deny that denial of the political and social significance of this political action taken because of bigotry is a defense of bigotry.

    Edit:

    The context was @thingsiplay@lemmy.ml providing a non-answer, saying that the removal does not matter much to them. This is not what was asked.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

    You do not care, perhaps, but your personal opinion on the significance of the flag in the game does not change the fact that its removal was political. The thing being removed was a symbol and the removal was political, therefore the action of removing the thing symbolizes (per the flag being a symbol, obviously) a removal of the things the flag stands for. Which are LGBTQIA+ rights.

    Your personal opinion on the matter may be different were you a member of this minority. Either way, though, I have given you a series of axioms indicating that the removal is a symbolic opposition to LGBTQIA+ rights.

    Edit:

    The context is yet another non-answer, this time saying "I do not care", among other things.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 week ago (2 children)

    It is, factually, a political action. Whether it has significance to you doesn't change that.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 week ago (1 child)

    A meaningless action

    We have gone over why and how it provably has political meaning. It is, per definition, not meaningless.

    I can have an opinion without being in the club

    This is irrelevant. I didn't say you cannot have an opinion. I said that your opinion on the quantitative meaning (severity of the meaning) of the action has no significance to the qualitative meaning of the action (the fact that the action is provably anti-LGBTQIA+ in intent).

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  • [+] -3 points 1 week ago (1 child)
  • [–] 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

    you invalidate my opinion because you do not agree.

    These are not the grounds on which I consider your opinion illogical. I consider your view illogical because you have declared meaningless a thing that, per definition, has meaning.

    It is, per definition, meaningless.

    It is not meaningless. The flag represents an idea. Its removal, therefore, symbolically represents the removal of that idea.

    Missing flag has no impact on anything.

    We have gone over how the missing flag has a political and social impact. It does not impact the gameplay, but that is not the point.

    It does not affect any freedom whatsoever.

    I did not make the case that its removal hindered freedom. I made the case (with an axiomatic proof I provided earlier) that the removal of a symbol is freedom is symbolic removal of freedom. I did not argue that it is a literal removal of freedom.

    I personally find it acceptable and a non issue.

    You can do this. That is fine. But the flag does, per definition, have a meaning, whether or not that meaning has value or significance to you. And therefore its removal does, per definition, have a meaning, whether that removal has value or significance to you.

    In a bar LGBT people are welcome as anyone else. Only flags representing anyone is not.

    Matthew Shephard was murdered by bar clientele because of his sexuality. That is a digression, but it feels worth mentioning that LGBTQIA+ people are not always welcomed.[1][2] That said, again, this is a digression.

    The issue here is not the lack of a flag. The issue is the political symbolism of the flag's removal. If a Pride flag were torn down from the window of a bar, it would be a political statement. In the same way, if the flag is removed from the game, it also has political symbolism.

    The point is that there is political symbolism. I am not trying to convince you that the symbolism should matter to you. I am just saying that the removal of a symbol represents the removal of the thing that symbol symbolizes. That's the only case I'm making here.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 week ago (11 children)

    Can I ask you something else: Would you consider the hypothetical game "intact" if intrinsically planned queer content was removed from the game after a totally hypothetical request?

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  • [–] 6 points 1 week ago (10 children)

    I think it's incredibly naive to think that when EA shit their pants because of a rainbow flag they will stop there.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 week ago (9 children)

    A flag is more than a graphical element on a slide, you know.

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  • [+] -2 points 1 week ago (9 children)
  • [–] 6 points 1 week ago* (7 children)

    The removal request was political. That is the same as if someone were to tear down the flag of a nation from a plaza. Sure, it would be "just fabric", but its removal carries political weight, and denying that is an exercise in fallacy.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (6 children)

    Flags exist as symbols. That is the entire purpose of a flag. Therefore, removing a symbol is a symbolic removal of the thing it stands for. The Pride Flag symbolizes LGBTQIA+ rights. Therefore, it's removal symbolizes removal of those rights.

    Edit:

    The context was @thingsiplay@lemmy.ml making the case that the Pride Flag has no meaning, and is "just a flag".

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  • [–] 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (5 children)

    Political action doesn't exist only when viewed. Political actions taken against the LGBTQIA+ community are still political actions taken against the LGBTQIA+ community, regardless of whether the game is on the market.

    Edit:

    The context was @thingsiplay@lemmy.ml saying that the censorship was meaningless because it happened without the game being sold yet.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 week ago (4 children)

    In scenario A, let us say a journalist writes a report about corruption, and it is censored before being released to the public. In scenario B, the report is released, then immediately censored. In both cases, it is censored.

    It is like this.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

    It is not bad-faith argumentation. And it absolutely has something to do with our discussion. The point is that your logic doesn't hold up when cast onto another work before and after release. Likewise, it does not hold up where you have used it.

    Whether the game was or wasn't released doesn't change the fact that censorship took place. Censorship did take place—that is fact—and this censorship was political. Therefore the removal of the flag is political censorship, and has political significance.

    Edit:

    The context was @thingsiplay@lemmy.ml saying that the journalist comparison was bad-faith argumentation because it was "unrelated", despite it being a rebuttal of his claim that the censorship was meaningless because it occurred prior to release.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 week ago (2 children)

    Because the game was still developed. You don’t know what the replacement for the flag would be.

    The removal of a symbol carries meaning, irrespective of what they would have replaced it with. Also, their motive in removing it had to do with anti-LGBTQIA+ policy in Saudi Arabia, so it most definitely wasn't to replace it with another open-minded option. This was censorship of the developers and, symbolically, of queer folk.

    It’s just a flag in a videogame. I personally don’t care about that.

    What you care about doesn't change the fact that censorship took place.

    people put too much weight into this in my opinion

    You can hold that view.

    the censorship is meaningless

    Symbols have meaning. Censorship of symbols, therefore, is symbolic censorship of the meaning of those symbols. The censorship is provably not without meaning.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 child)

    Again, we have gone over the political meaning. The lack of change to gameplay is irrelevant. The political meaning of the action is the significance, not the evidence of that action to the end-user.

    Edit:

    The context was @thingsiplay@lemmy.ml once again stating that the flag has no meaning, its removal has no meaning, and that it has no meaning because there is no impact on gameplay.

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  • [+] -3 points 1 week ago (1 child)
  • [–] 3 points 1 week ago

    If we speak about real world rights, then it would be significant. But in a game lacking a flag, I think is not important.

    Again, the censorship of the flag, which is a symbol, is symbolically meaningful. The degree of significance is not the subject of debate.

    The flag doesn’t matter, what matters are the actions and story.

    To the gameplay, perhaps. But I am not discussing the gameplay. I am discussing how the removal of the flag is symbolic of opposition to LGBTQIA+ rights.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 week ago (1 child)

    Actually, the same could not be said for Creamfresh. You're the only one defending censorship and suppressing an entire group of people and using seemingly logical arguments in bad faith to make your appalling stance sound reasonable while dismissing any rightfully upset counterarguments. Grow up.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 week ago (11 children)

    Not really surprised given the instance you’re from.

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  • [+] -12 points 1 week ago* (10 children)
  • [+] 7 points 1 week ago (10 children)
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  • [–] 12 points 1 week ago (9 children)

    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.

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  • [+] -9 points 1 week ago (9 children)
  • [–] 8 points 1 week ago (5 children)

    I don't know if you're being genuine, but it doesn't matter to you because to you visual or symbolic representations of the validity of LGBT++ lifestyles don't apply to you.

    If you really don't care then you can just say nothing. But because you're saying something it actually sounds like you do care — about preserving a corporation's right to remove a sign of queer representation from a game.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 week ago (4 children)

    I see the disconnect. To many people all parts of the game are gameplay, because they happen in the context of a game.

    Art used, themes explored, dialogue choices, unskippable cutscenes all happen within the context of playing the game, so matter to many people.

    Like just imagine if Harry's pronouns were female in Disco Elysium and literally nothing else changed in the game. No art, no gameplay, no dialogue. Just the times gender is mentioned it's swapped to "she" — it would have an impact on how the game is perceived, and how it feels to play it.


    It's fine if this doesn't affect you at all, but your experience isn't universal.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 week ago (3 children)

    Right. No experiences are universal. We agree on that too.

    So if you don't care one way or another, and you understand how someone else does care, then why do you feel the need to repeat that you don't care? Do you think other people also shouldn't care?

    I'm just not sure what your point is other than you don't care.

    Personally, an LGBT adjacent flag doesn't represent me at all but out of solidarity with queer people I support them in their struggle for every little bit of visible representation and validation that they can get.

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  • [+] -2 points 1 week ago (3 children)
  • [–] 5 points 1 week ago (2 children)

    Well it's definitely overblown, but I also agree with them because fuck EA I'll never give them a break on anything.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 week ago (2 children)

    Except it has, the flag was only there because somebody fought for their right exist. But the more you write, the more you fit in with .ml

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  • [–] 12 points 1 week ago

    No I don’t believe, open your f…… eyes, it is happening everywhere. As I wrote before, the flag itself isn’t the problem, it’s because it is a sign of much worse things. Next time it isn’t a flag, it’s the gameplay or whatever, they keep moving the goalposts.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 week ago

    This isn't about the tangible flag as an item but as a symbol of what the flag represents. Removing the flag is the first step in a series of patterns of erasure. If you accept this, then you might accept the next small step, then the next one, then the next one, and so on.

    I'll leave this as, "I disagree with your opinion and I don't personally believe you wouldn't be alright with further erasure given your openness to be ok with any amount of erasure."

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