Imagine if EA had done this. EA, one of the main pantomime villains in gaming, conducts an AMA on a website full of white supremacists that support and post child abuse and child porn. Gaming Youtubers everywhere would relentlessly swarm all over this like flies around a carcass, never willing to let go, because this is a legit goldmine. There would be material for weeks if not months, relentlessly and gleefully laughing at the company's expense for its association with child porn and loudly proclaiming it the worst PR disaster in living memory (most content creators and reports I imagine would gloss over the whole extreme homophobia and Nazism stuff). I can almost imagine the "EA ARE PAEDOS" video headlines and practically the whole of the gaming press going for the jugular with heavy hitting article after another. "After Anthem, EA drops to a whole new low!'
But since it's not EA or Activision but a smaller scale plucky publisher that so happens to have snapped up a whole bunch of formerly abandoned IPs that gamers remember and are fond of, the response has been as limp as a soggy rich tea biscuit left in a hot cuppa. Considering this is not some comparative "oopsie" where a single social media employee opts to be a bigot on Twitter but senior figures within the company making the active decision to happily play ball with some of the worst dregs the wretched corners of the internet have to offer and did not nope out after a nanosecond, is extraordinarily damning. In electing to give this story some of the most feeble coverage ever while sounding like they accept the bullshit apology as something genuine and said in good faith, the gaming press have failed spectacularly. In sounding as timid and feeble as they do, they are content with letting these guys off the hook. An all round trash fire.
The year may be young, but the magnitude of this fiasco is so damning and so great in multiple ways which go beyond the simple fact that there is almost certainly a pervasive corporate culture within THQ Nordic thinking it is worth courting child porn loving white supremacists, that I can't imagine this being topped as ResetEra's 2019 Fail of the Year. A travesty for the innocent employees and developers who had to watch in horror as their dipshit bosses went ahead with this stunt. A travesty for the gaming press in how reluctant it's been to rake THQ Nordic's asses over the coals for being chummy with regulars on a white supremacist child porn cesspool. A travesty for decent people as a whole with yet another likely confirmation that the company may get away with this relatively unscathed, but now protected by its own freshly recruited online brownshirts army.
And as for the CEO who would rather say and do nothing about this, your silence is more than enough to indicate tacit approval. To speculate that you're a coward would be way too charitable. To suggest you simply don't care would be way too kind. No, you flat out approve this shit given your sustained silence and without an ounce of moral integrity, would just rather it blows over. No reasonable CEO would stare at this raging fire, point to the guy holding the can of petrol and with suspicious burn marks all over him and be all "yeah what he said" and hope the inferno will quietly put itself out.
Thank you for stating the obvious.
I was going to post this whole thing, it's fucking hilarious. Reset Era is trying so hard to push this "THQ supports pedophilia" angle when it is just an opportunity for a naked power play on their part. It's all in "bad faith", as they would say. Going onto 8chan was clearly dumb for a brand/PR move, but there's still a natural limit to how much you can say that means, it doesn't really give you the license to make shit up. However, if history (limited to just videogames/GAF even) tells us anything though, if you say it enough and ban anything that opposes you, you might just be able to convince yourself and everyone around you.
Anyway Anthem is definitely set for 2019 Fail of the Year, RIP Bioware. I hope this retar- Alex Jones intellect level individual loses his shit.
