My favorite part was that GoG was told they cannot send this email in Germany because it would break the Nazi rule so they purposely get blocked their emails to getting to Germany.

In other words, they knew.

Their “apology” actually admitted that they knew about the potential for rendering differences. They say they knew that certain symbols could render as Nazi icons, which is why they specifically excluded those symbols from the email they sent to German accounts.

But if we extend that same “we didn’t send it to Germany” thing to the logical conclusion, it means they intentionally sent it to everyone else even when knowing the potential for issues.

Developers: you can't use unused Unicode to represent photos, such a simple string of Data could be interpreted an infinite different ways If there isn't unity.

Marketing team: bah humbug, what's the worst thing that could happen...

Do you happen to have your GOG account in Germany or in German language?

Sure there's intent. Obviously!

The screenshot is from the PCGamer article

MFW

Yes, but. Big but.

The devs of the games included in that email signed off on it before it went out. The version the devs were shown had no "runes" included.

GOG has acknowledged that those runes can display on some devices distinctly as the symbol for the SS, so they did not send this email to subscribers subscribed in the German language. Instead of just using a different fucking symbol, or not using it twice in a row.

As far as I understand it, those are pretty random runes, not specifically Slavic at all.

Taken as a whole, it shows that they had some idea of how this would appear, and they went through with it anyway, for no obvious benefit.

Not a good look.

Notice there is no double sig in there. Also note that Rodnovery is a neopagan religion, associated with nationalism. It's the Slavic equivalent the Norse pantheon fetishism you see in the West in the form of Odinism.

You should assume they're Nazi symbols because they are, even if Nazis stole a lot of symbols from everyone else. The sig was first adapted into the double sig in 1929 to be used as the Schutzstaffel logo

I'm sure there are some fash doing this, but a lot of comments here seem extremely naive and forgiving. And they come from lib instances, which I have grievances with, just not regarding dogwhistling & normalizing fascism (unless it comes out of UA...)

interesting how easily is for a company to not shoot itself in the foot if they don't have public shareholders

Where's the game store footgun meme?

Crap, there's a quote about doing that, I just can't remember whether it was Technoblade, Sun Tzu or Emperor Rosselle who said it...

ffs, why must everything good turn out to be shit. well, gog hasnt been THAT good, but it has been nice extra thing. knowing companies cant do anything without having at least 6 meetings about it, there is no way this went unnoticed by people there, so i rule out rogue actor doing this.

I do kind of like the fact that it's in Unicode though. So things like this are actually possible. Sort of weird decision really.

Don't let that stop you.

This is messed up, as a contributor to their Patreon to preserve games, I wrote some pretty harsh words.

Why must someone get fired? If this is a mistake, I'm perfectly fine with that person getting yelled at.