Ghazi

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A community for progressive issues, social justice and LGBT+ causes in media, gaming, entertainment and tech.

Official replacement for Reddit's r/GamerGhazi

Content should be articles, video essays, podcasts about topics relevant to the forum. No memes, single images or tweets/toots/... please!

Community rules:

Be respectful and civil with each other. Don't be a jerk. There is a real human being on the other side of your screen. See also the Blahaj.Zone Community Rules

No bigotry of any kind allowed. Making racist, sexist, trans-/homo-/queerphobic, otherwise demeaning and hateful comments is not ok. Disabilities and mental illnesses are not to be used as insults and should not be part of your comment unless speaking of your own or absolutely relevant.

No gatekeeping and being rude to people who don't agree with you. Leave “gamer” stereotypes out of your comment (e.g. sexless, neck bearded, teenaged, basement-dwelling, etc). Don't compare people to animals, or otherwise deny their humanity. Even if you think someone is the worst human on the planet, do not wish death or harm upon them.

No "justice porn". Posts regarding legal action and similar is allowed, but celebrating someone being harmed is not.

Contrarianism for its own sake is unnecessary and not welcome.

No planning operations, no brigading, no doxxing or similar activities allowed.

Absolutely no defense of GamerGate and other right-wing harassment campaigns, no TERFs and transphobia, racism, dismissing of war crimes and praise of fascists. This includes “JAQing off”, intentionally asking leading questions while pretending to be a neutral party. This also applies to other forms of authoritarianism and authoritarian or criminal actions by liberal or leftist governments.

NSFW threads, such as ones discussing erotic art, pornography and sex work, must be tagged as such.

Moderators can take action even if none of the rules above are broken.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
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"History does not repeat itself but it often rhymes."

If you're not aware of what's going on Aftermath have an excellent write-up:
https://aftermath.site/sweet-baby-detected-conspiracy-theory-steam

Currently another right-wing harassment campaign is raging and it keeps escalating, drawing wider circles every day. At the heart is a small consultancy company, called Sweet Baby Inc. They are accused of "destroying games with diversity and inclusivity". It is - of course - conspiratorial nonsense, the company isn't even doing what the chuds accuse them of. The fake outrage is yet again a pretext to spout hate and revel in sexism, racism, homo- and transphobia.

If all of this feels familiar to those who have been around the last time, that's because it is: 2024's Gators have fully the moniker of "GamerGate 2.0"

In the tenth year since GamerGate, we're seeing a repeat of it in the harassment campaign against narrative design studio Sweet Baby Inc. The same forces that set off the initial one have changed their language and targets, but the reactionary current is back, only strengthened in the intervening years, and still enabled by a corporate class that cares more about profit margins than worker well being.

This campaign - like in 2014 - is a part of the larger right-wing attack against anything that their fascist ideology disapproves of. Like the last time, they choose a small group to punish and harass in order to send a wider message. This needs to be stopped. But what we get instead is yet another failure of management class: Valve and Discord who own the platforms where (currently) the majority of the harassment is organized, have yet to take any measure. All we can do at the moment is to support each other and oppose the fascists.

So to SBI and its workers, solidarity, always.

~ The Ghazi mod team

PPS: Free Palestine

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The new policy follows weeks of back-and-forth complaints about Islamophobia and antisemitism on the platform.

And - of course - LGBT+ rights are now a "sensitive topic".

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And because letting “random people steer a company Twitch Plays Pokémon-style” instead of venture capitalists is “fucking funny”

If anyone encounters a paywall: Archived version here

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The network has aired at least 42 segments mentioning the topic in the last two weeks

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"It doesn't do anything except make the staff lose motivation."

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It’s official: Concord is never coming back

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The recent Pokemon hack has provided tons of information about the series

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Vtuber models are not cheap and the wait times can be months long

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AI-powered search engines are surfacing deeply racist, debunked research.

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Google-funded Character.AI added guardrails, but grieving mom wants a recall.

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WEBTOON Entertainment's labor union is requesting fair compensation after its CEO was awarded an eye-popping $30 million in cash and stock options.

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Streaming culture incentivizes this kind of hateful rhetoric.

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Sponsored streams have had three distinct phases, or eras, since 2014.

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1814's Treaty of Paris is having some long-winded repercussions

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Sony's Concord might be the biggest entertainment failure of all time, so why wasn't it news?

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When the Supreme Court decided against Grokster, it changed the internet forever.

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"We will not pay for our bosses' mistakes"

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Vice shuttered the site in 2023

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The former Persona team’s new RPG is rooted in the real world but unbounded by reality

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Frostpunk 2, 11 Bit Studios' magnum opus, is proof that video games are at their most interesting when they engage with politics and ideology head on.

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Godot got a spite fork by the name "Redot" after their community managers quote-retweeted a chud calling the use of licensed game engines woke. Some people jumped onto the bandwagon, but it seems the engine is still too woke for some YouTube commentators.

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/20760179

CD Projekt joint CEO Michał Nowakowski has issued a strongly worded response to accusations that the studio "is in a lot of trouble right now" because of "diversity hires," saying the people peddling such nonsense need to "stop looking for conspiracy theories."

"Seems we live in times where anyone can record complete nonsense and make a story out of it," Nowakowski said in response to a post on X by YouTuber Endymion, who has a long history of stridently complaining about diversity and "wokeness" in videogames.

"CDPR talent leaving? We have the lowest rotation of people in recent years. DEI-driven recruitment? We hire based on merit and talent alone, just as we make games driven by artistic vision alone. Why did we choose [Unreal Engine]? Because it enables us to work on our games more efficiently and we remain cutting edge tech-wise. The Witcher 3’s director left? Well, yeah, more than 2 years ago… Now, can we stop looking for conspiracy theories and go back to making cool stuff?"

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This November, Florida residents will decide whether to amend their state constitution to protect reproductive rights, overturning the state's near-total abortion ban after six weeks of pregnancy.

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