Everyone showing up late to go ‘well I don’t see why they removed it!’ –
You are why.
Trolls escalate. They keep pushing until they get smacked down, then cry and scream and pretend they’ve been proven right. Being ignored doesn’t just embolden them, it bores them, and tells them they need to get worse to get attention. No matter what happens - no matter what anyone says to them - they get to use it in their stupid little word game.
The nature of bad faith is that there is no right answer.
You have to simply get rid of it, and the sooner, the better.
I understand your point that the behavior surrounding certain mods can escalate and create a toxic environment. In that sense, it’s not just the mod in question but the kind of interactions it may foster. However, that leads us into a very slippery slope. If we start removing mods based on what they might encourage rather than what they actually do, where do we draw the line?
Note that mods can be used for multiple reasons, not all of which are nefarious. Some people may genuinely appreciate the option to customize their experience in a way that the mod allows, without any intention of engaging in toxic behavior.
Your argument seems to be based on the idea of acting pre-emptively to negate potential harm, which is a valid point. But this can also set a concerning precedent that may affect the open nature of modding communities, by limiting what can and cannot be customized.
So the question then becomes, how do we balance preventing potential harm with preserving the user’s freedom to customize their experience? It’s a complicated issue, but one that deserves open dialogue rather than summary judgment.
To confused people exploring from all Communities trying to understand what the hell is going on:
Bethesda is a game studio who does a decent job of giving people choice to do/be whatever they want in their games. Out of the box they included the option to choose your pronouns in a new game called “Starfield”.
They also make it possible to modify their games to make very drastic changes to the player experience.
Nexus is a site that hosts thousands of mods to all sorts of games. People make mods, upload them to Nexus and players download them.
Someone made a mod to remove the option to choose pronouns from Starfield.
Nexus decided they don’t want to host this mod. It’s hurtful to people and goes against their values of inclusivity.
That’s about it. Most of the people whinging about censorship don’t even play the game. They’re just here to whinge about how the world is moving on from old bigoted ways and they want to stay in the past and be jerks to people for merely existing. If they actually cared, they’d just download the mod from some other site. The mod itself is probably not much bigger than this reply.
In undue fairness, a mod to downgrade nudity or vulgarity would kinda make sense, if someone personally didn’t want to see that. (Or if they were concerned about it for streaming. Or they had kids in the room.) For example, there’s some racial slur graffiti in Bioshock Infinite that is used for highly effective shock value and characterization, and I could see someone wanting to tone it down.
The root issue is what’s being removed: the abstract possibility of characters being called “him” or “her” independent of their appearance. To people who won’t use the feature, it is literally nothing. It simply does not exist beyond a checkbox they’ll scroll clean past. The game part of the game will work exactly as they expect, from start to finish.
They’re whining about censorship because the real purpose of this mod is to signal that they’re against anyone else having that option.
They are performatively upset by this trivial separation of character model and branch condition. Because they hate trans people. There is no other possible motivation, because this pointless change is simple and direct.
This removal is a website telling those bigoted trolls: poop in someone else’s yard.
I’ll add that my understanding is that you aren’t even prompted to choose a pronoun in-game – it defaults to one or the other based on your character creation choices, and you can then change it if you want to. It’s literally a non-issue.
Happens all the time IRL to me. I use both he and she pronouns and ignorant people always ask why bother just pick one. Well, I did, they’re my PERSONAL pronouns and I chose both these.
Look I’ve got no skin in the game here, what’s wrong with having a mod that removes a selector in a character creation screen?
I get that some people are upset if they get misgendered or whatever (as I would be…my chosen pronouns just happen to line up with what everyone assumes they are…comfy living) but is it really necessary to force everyone to have a pronoun selection option if they don’t want a pronoun selection option? You’re not going to make someone blinded by hate see any clearer by forcing them to do something that only affects them.
Edit: I’m sorry if my questioning hurt some folks, that wasn’t my intention. I couldn’t see what the big deal was, but thanks to those who made the effort to engage with me, I have a more informed view and I can appreciate why the mod was removed and why its existence was upsetting.
This is not the first time something like this happened, some months back someone upload a mod that removed all rainbow flags from the spiderman game. Im guessing its the exact same thing like the last time: Someone made a new account to upload a mod that was only made to spark controversy. The mod itself didn’t matter, the author is just a troll that wanted a reaction from this. They knew they would get banned so they made a new account. Nexus has the same stance on this as last time: they don’t platform trolls so they removed it. It’s not about the mod, it’s about the authors intentions, which are to harm the platform
Was going to comment the same. How is this mod hurting anyone? Isnt this the point of modding, to tweak it a little bit to suit your tastes? Its not like its a rape or child molesting mod. Those things should get deleted. But this? Such a petty thing to do.
Imagine there was a group of people in your school, in your workplace, in your city who for some reason feel that Kazakhspy should not exist. They’re not allowed to kill you, that’s against the law, but they would if they could. Instead, they say fuck Kazakhspy, go kill yourself Kazakhspy, I can’t stand you Kazakhspy. Hearing that kind of thing on a regular basis might be a little hurtful. Now imagine some game studio heard about this and thought hey, let’s include Kazakhspy in our game. And then that group in your community was like “what the fuck is this! I hate Kazakhspy and now they’re shoving Kazakhspy down my throat in a videogame? I will not stand for this.” And goes through the effort of making a mod to remove you from the game and puts it on the website. You hear about this and see that it’s up there with a few downloads. You might be a little hurt to know some people hate you so much they’ll mod a game to spite you just because they don’t like your existence. Then the website owner is like, “Wow, this is weirdly hateful and doesn’t belong on my website. Let’s not perpetuate hate against Kazakhspy.”
That’s why. In context it’s hurtful to people because the intention of creating it was to hurt people through hate.
What’s wrong with having a mod that removes the skin color selector? I get people care about race and stuff, but is it really necessary to force everyone to have a skin colour selection option if they don’t want a skin colour selection option? You’re not going to make a racist see clearer by forcing them to do something that only affects them.
You have it in your own question. It is hateful. It was made by the hateful for the hateful to perpetuate a hateful idea. You might even call it a kind of hate speech, which probably means it violate Nexus’s terms. Even if it doesn’t, it’s icky af. And Nexus is entirely in their right to refuse hosting it. The nod creator is still free to use their own mod and share it in other ways, but Nexus should not be forced to host it.
If the primary objective here is to engage in constructive dialogue, then name-calling and overgeneralization serve no purpose and only fuel the fire. The issue at hand has been conflated to be about political affiliations like Republican vs. Democrat, when that’s not the core point of discussion at all. We’re here to debate the merits and drawbacks of mod removal, not to stereotype one another based on our political leanings or otherwise.
I must point out, albeit reluctantly, that much of the stereotyping and overgeneralizing in this thread seems to be coming from those who are in favor of the mod’s removal. This does little to advance a constructive conversation and only serves to deepen divisions.
If we’re truly interested in finding common ground or at least understanding the other side of the argument, we need to stop dismissing each other’s viewpoints out of hand. Only through respectful and open discussion can we hope to reach a resolution that considers the full complexity of the issue.
I can get behind the whole: “i’m playing games to escape from the world, stop dragging the real world politics into games” sentiment, but!
I made a trans character in cyberpunk because haha look a penis and boobies, Apparently Diego is now in a gay relationship with Sam…something about Sam and Cora (i find them adoreable, i’m just sad i can’t give her all the books i steal) made me prefer them and…well i’m gay it seems lol.
Gender identity is only political because conservatives made it political. Choice of pronouns shouldn’t be political. What gender you are shouldn’t be political. These people make it political and then it has to be removed from apolitical discussions. Just like how climate change has been made political, it’s not, we’re all going to fucking die, that’s not political.
I, for one, am very upset at seeing politics in muh game that includes mercenaries, piracy, loan sharking, corporate espionage, religious extremism, terrorism, war crimes, gang warfare, drug addiction, poverty, shoplifting, mass shootings, genetic engineering, environmentalism, atheism, corruption, philanthropy, smuggling, …
I can get behind the whole: “i’m playing games to escape from the world, stop dragging the real world politics into games” sentiment, but!
If you’re playing games for escapism, play a simple puzzle game, or a racing game, or maybe Minecraft. Flight Simulator. Tetris. Rocket League.
Any game that attempts to build a believable world is going to get political occasionally, because a believable world has class politics, war, struggles between technology and the natural world, etc. etc. etc. Even a game like Ratchet & Clank doesn’t shy away from the politics inherent in its world-building. Truly incredible how “Gamers” have gone from an edgy subculture that reveled in right-wing panic to a seething mass of bloated man-babies who can’t even handle being confronted with ideas.
These people would prefer if you use random made up politics in line with the world it is set in.
Instead of real world politics dragged into a fantasy setting. That’s why i can understand their point just because i understand where they come from doesn’t mean i agree with it or support them.
Heck i made a transgender in cyberpunk because i can, a lot can be said about that too. I don’t give a damn about what people want, just do it but accept that not everyone is going to like it nor agree with it and if you can’t deal with that then do not do it…you are not strong enough to cope with the downsides.
I’m guessing your first language isn’t English, in fact judging by your comment history, I’d say you’re Dutch. Anyway, those words are adjectives in English, and using them as nouns is often perceived as impolite. You’d want to say “I made a transgender character” instead.
I do not understand this debacle at all. 100% of people against the inclusion of pronouns—USE A PREFERRED PRONOUN. I guarantee if I called one these man children a “her” they’d lose their little minds.
I can tell you definitively that yes, this debate hurts people. Sending the statement that it’s a valid point of view to consider trans people mentally ill (or worse) harms people. If you look at how our existence is being debated and the consequences of that you would have to be very privileged to not see a problem.
This isn’t a court of law and I’m not arguing the statutes. I don’t like unilateral censorship in any form and I’d be equally butt hurt if they banned a mod to include pronouns.
Bear in mind we are both here because of the actions of a private corpo.
Imagine if they removed a mod that included pronouns.
A mod that makes other people feel included is NOT on the same level as a mod that deliberately excludes them. There’s a massive difference here.
The pronoun removing mod is a pretty blatant message of hate and deserves to be moderated as such. People can go on about freedom of speech blah blah blah, but no one is required to include you in their community if you’re being mean and hateful. That’s exactly what happened here.
If you don’t want to feel excluded then don’t install the mod.
I don’t understand why people argue for less options that don’t affect them.
No one is forcing the mod on you. Is it really that harmful that it exists?
I don’t give 2 shits if a mod exists that makes everyone in the game trans or gay or anything else. I’m just not going to install the mod unless it improves the game in some way or it sounds like it would make the game more interesting with alternative play styles or something.
I’m never going to argue that the mod I’m not interested in should be removed because it’s not reinforcing my beliefs.
Tolerance goes both ways. I tolerate your beliefs and you tolerate mine.
That tolerance doesn’t exist in this woke reality we are enduring at the moment. Anything that doesn’t repeat the correct narrative is subjected to cancel culture. It’s always my way or the highway.
No one is forcing the mod on you. Is it really that harmful that it exists?
Yes, in very much the same way that hate speech is moderated out of communities, and for good reason. Allowing this stuff to exist is basically saying that this is okay when it frankly isn’t. Imagine if there was a mod out there that removed your entire race and culture out of the game. How would that make you feel if you were just scrolling through the list of mods? It’s just a shitty statement to make.
We moderate things like the N-word and antisemitic Nazi bullshit out of forums all the time. This is the exact same thing and if you can’t see that, well frankly you’re probably in a position of privilege.
Tolerance goes both ways. I tolerate your beliefs and you tolerate mine.
This argument is frequently used by the intolerant to justify their actions. The one’s who identify as they aren’t the ones going around telling those who identify as he or she that they’re wrong. It’s the other way around. You’re completely misidentifying who’s being intolerant here.
I don’t know how to do the cool quote thing you did but I’ll answer in order.
I don’t care if you want to edit my race out of your game. It has zero effect on me. It’s your private game. Why would I care? If I don’t like the mod it I just won’t install it. I’m never going to intervene to stop you from enjoying your game the way you want just because I don’t agree or like it.
This argument is just trying to find reasons to be offended.
I’ll give you an example that will definitely trigger you. I play HOI4. That game is a historical WW2 game. The game does not have an accurate flag for Germany because it’s symbol is not allowed to be shown in Germany. I always use a mod to put the proper Nazi flag in the game because I want my historical game to be representitive of the period. Denying me the ability to use it doesn’t make the historical event suddenly not happen. It happened. Am I suddenly a Nazi supporter because I want my war game to reflect reality?
Im not out Heil Hitlering, or calling for the deaths of millions of Jews. I’m just playing was war game in the privacy of my own home.
I’m not American so the N word has very little meaning to me. I think it’s stupid that people can’t even write the word without being banned. How are you supposed to talk about it. It’s rediculous. If your skin colour is the right shade then you can go around saying the forbidden word at will?? Honestly I’m never going to say it because it’s not part of my cultural norm anyway.
In Australia the racist word people used for indigenous was ‘coon’. I’ve never used it and I never will. Ive not even heard anyone use it since maybe the 80s when a kid was trying to be an edgelord. Do I think the word should be banned internationally just because some wankers used it 30+ years ago? No. If you’re using it in a hateful way against someone or a people, then sure, that bastard should face some consequences.
I’m just never going to support blanket banning activities or words for everyone because of a few bad actors.
I think that’s a terrible idea.
Now we are onto the apparently oppressed rich western people that want to be called some idiotic pronouns like xi, or horse person or some other BS. I’m not doing it. It’s too stupid.
If someone wants to be called she instead of he, then whatever, I’ll call them it. It causes me no harm and I really don’t care. Live your best life.
Blocking a person from modifying their game because you don’t like the idea? That’s Nazi book burning philosophy right there. If you can’t see it irony then I don’t know what to say to you. You think your in the right, but your actually to oppressor, even if you think it’s with good intentions.
If you’re using it in a hateful way against someone or a people, then sure, that bastard should face some consequences.
That’s exactly what the creator of this mod intended and its hilarious that you don’t see that.
In Australia the racist word people used for indigenous was ‘coon’. I’ve never used it and I never will.
Think about it this way. There’s a reason why you don’t use it, right? There’s a reason why your friends don’t use it. If one of your friends uses it all the time to hate on others, would you be okay with that? If its as offensive as you say it is and I have no reason to doubt otherwise, would you want to be associated with that? Probably not. You’re making conscious decisions every day about who you want to hang out with, who you want to be associated with. You’ve cultivated your own community of people who you like and want to hang out with.
That’s exactly what Nexus Mods is doing. They want to cultivate a community that’s gender inclusive. They don’t want to deal with people who aren’t, nor give them a platform to do so. They’re within their right to do so.
Just because Nexus Mods is an online community doesn’t mean it’s different from real life. That’s what people fail to understand.
The reason some things get downvoted, is that they’re factually incorrect, morally intolerable, or just plain incoherent. Reasons matter. The fact it’s “your opinion” means nothing. Some opinions are bad, actually.
What you’re doing is a finger-curling argument. ‘Oh what, is curling your finger a crime?! I’m in trouble cuz I went like this?!’ Sir - you shot your wife.
How about names. Do you call Muhammad Ali still Cassius Clay? Just because that’s the name he was given at birth. Should people not have the right to change their name? Like it is here in Germany. And what exactly do you consider stupid about the pronouns them or they? I think they (!) are just normal pronouns, aren’t they? And for quite some time they are regularly used to replace single persons, if the gender of that person isn‘t known. I know that because when that started I was totally confused because I had learned different at school in the 70s.
My only take on the pronoun thing is please don’t get mad at me and go into lecture mode if I forget your preferred pronouns for a second. It’s essentially muscle memory, and I will already feel bad about it just by your facial expression from the mistake.
People generally shouldn’t get mad as long as you’re behaving in good faith. It’s like accidentally calling someone by the wrong name, you just apologise and correct your mistake.
Trans and non-binary people often get portrayed as if they’re monsters, but most are reasonable people who can understand mistakes and are capable of accepting apologies.
The more I think about all of this, the more rude I find even using pronouns instead of their name in general… are there certain sayings in English that generally require defaulting to pronouns? I am having a hard time coming up with many.
(Yes I am aware of the fact I used a pronoun to type this, but it’s not directed to a specific audience)
Generally speaking, it’s awkward in English (or even weird) to constantly use the Proper Noun every single time you refer to a person.
Simplest example is “Jim got into his car”. “Jim got into Jim’s car” is strange. And that’s within a single sentence. Properly in English, we use gendered pronouns for all unambiguous references to a person several sentences in a row. For example:
“Jim got into his car. He turned it on, and hit the gas. When he saw a red light, he stopped quickly. Jim got impatient, and honked on the horn”. That would be entirely proper, and virtually none of those pronouns should be replaced with Jim’s proper name.
Thank you. This explained how pronouns would be used, at first I always imagined you would be taking to “jim”, bur after reading I could see where you may be telling a story about “Jim” to others as a third party. I know that sounds dumb, but I never claimed to be smart.
I appreciate you taking the effort to comment instead of just downvoting like some others.
Not a problem. People don’t usually think about pronouns. We could circumvent a lot of confusion if there were an agreeable gender-neutral pronoun in English… But people have gone back and forth about the only one we have (“they”) enough that it rubs both sides wrong. Gendering a person in a sentence rarely disambiguates… it only maters if you have a conversation with exactly 1 male and female subject and ZERO genderable objects.
A man and a woman sitting in a boat, for example, and “her” still might be ambiguous.
Personally, it’s nbd when people slip up - especially people who’ve known me for a very long time pre-transition. Oftentimes they correct themselves, and I usually feel worse that they feel bad about it. It’s pretty easy to tell when it’s intentional or not, and I reserve my ire for people who clearly mean disrespect.
Though, I should say, that’s now - early on in transition, it was certainly a bit harder to take. It reminded me of very fresh family abandonment and abuse over my identity. That’s not on the people who accidentally called me by the wrong pronoun, but it certainly could put me in a pretty bad place and I’m sure I wasn’t the friendliest in those moments. The more that trans folks are supported by their friends and family, the more secure they feel and the less likely they are to react strongly to being accidentally misgendered, imo.
But what the anti-trans people tend to miss when making the “offended every mis-gender” is the wide gulf of difference between being hurt and being offended. I’ve known people in Emergency Services who had PTSD triggered by off-color comments that reminded them of something they lived through (things like “he’ll have your head for this”… you can imagine why).
They weren’t offended by those off-color comments. They were hurt. And those of us who care about them are careful not to say things that hurt those we love. But if we do slip up, we know and they know that it wasn’t out of malice, and nobody is offended.
…except the people who want to call you by your deadname because hurting you makes them feel good. They are offended, and they want to hurt you. And nobody should be making excuses for them. Dozens of people here are, and that’s a shame.
NexusMods is a private company with their own conditions for using their services.
You are not entitled to anything on others’ properties, including your ability to speak.
There is no freedom of speech here on lemmy.world either for you, they can restrict and block your posts from being seen by others, still their rights to do so.
People say Lemmy isn’t a hivemind but the reaction to your comment proves that this is not the case.
I’m pro choice either way. If people want to identify as they, them, it. It’s up to them. If people want the option to remove that from their game it’s also up to them. Who cares either way.
This is the wrong take tbh. It isn’t about censorship. The mod itself is a message of hate and deserves to be moderated as such, just like on any other platform.
Imagine if you were scrolling through NexusMods and you saw a mod that removed characters of your ethnicity or race from the game, or maybe a mod that added say Nazi symbols or something. How would that make you feel? Mods get removed over inappropriate content all the time, this is no different.
or maybe a mod that added say Nazi symbols or something.
You know there are WW2 games that have mods that do exactly this, right? Specifically because they don’t use Nazi imagery to refer to Nazi Germany because that imagery is illegal in Germany so they use substitute imagery that’s Germany-safe to represent Nazi Germany, because that’s cheaper than managing two editions where one is historically accurate and the other is Germany-friendly. For an example of this, see Hearts of Iron.
Then you get mods that restore the historically correct imagery.
Lol I feel like you’re just proving my point. The question isn’t whether these mods exist. Of course they do. But an entire country has made such symbolism illegal specifically because its a bad part of their past and they find it offensive. They’re within their right to do so and so is Nexus Mods. Nexus Mods are allowed to remove whatever content they find offensive to cultivate the community that they want.
It’s not censorship when private groups are doing it. Moreso, I think the entire world has figured out the right answer to the Paradox of Tolerance is intolerance (yes, even censorship).
There are two reasons said censorship is okay.
Those who hold to these extreme beliefs are happy to censor the opposing viewpoint whether we censor them or not. They see the idea of trans human rights as unworthy of protection.
So long as you allow a false belief to spread, there will always be adherents. When it is a harmful belief, that makes even innocent-seeming propagation of that belief genuinely harmful… which by every moral tradition (and most legal ones) is sufficient to override freedom of speech.
Remember, there is no free speech absolutism where all speech is protected. Anyone who claims otherwise is lying or ignorant. What we’re arguing about is whether to draw the line at malicious behavior that is already more harmful than speech many of us are already against.
And from your “don’t want stupid pronouns in my game”, you show you’ve fallen for bullet point #2.
The Switch 2 is also (likely) a handheld, and the Steam Deck is also similar in performance to the ps4/xbox as well, and only came out a year ago, so I wouldn’t expect anything much more than that (especially since the Switch 2 will probably be smaller and have a bigger battery).
Man, I have no interest in a handheld… I just don’t get the appeal there. I have a handheld already, it’s my phone. I want the next nintendo creation to bring me back to wii bowling, and that sort of crazy cool stuff.
Instead, the last console brought us worse controllers that cramp your hands, and lack innovative design.
I played Wii bowling on my steam deck. Using Dolphin, a Wii mote connected through Bluetooth, and a USB sensor bar. Then just a dock to put it on the TV and charge it.
Only thing that gave me trouble was the speaker in the Wii mote.
It’s because Nintendo knows that portables sell massively higher than consoles for them, and that’s the reality of making a portable. Nintendo cares massively about the hardware and put a lot of effort into making something that fits their ambitions and audience.
Removing the mod is imposing a political viewpoint, and it's also completely performative. Why should NexusMods care if the mod exists? Everybody mods their games at their own consent.
No non-conforming people were protected by this move.
Rejecting bigotry is not supposed to be a political viewpoint.
Addendum: "YourContentSucks" just went through my profile and downvoted everything lol what a cuck A2: Actually now that I think of it the username does kind of check out
Rejecting gender ideology isn't bigotry. Also, like I said, nobody installs mods they don't want. It literally affects zero people who don't want it to affect them.
No, sorry, I'm not willing to play your stupid little word game where you try to semantically differentiate a demographic from the "ideology" that that demographic meaningfully exists and should have the right to pursue happiness in society.
The set of ideas that you refer to includes the ideas that transgender people exist as transgender, and non-binary people exist as non-binary.
The concept of "trans" is part of gender ideology. They are people with an identity disorder. Conceptualizing them as "trans" can only exist if you subscribe to the concept of gender in the first place, and gender only exists as an abstraction in the minds of gender ideologues (and people who don't know any better, who have been duped by gender ideologues).
False. Like, completely and totally wrong. The science is clear, and you are on the side opposite of it. There are experts on one side, and you on the other. It is amazing just how many incorrect statements you are barfing out.
How come you're only defending the people putting this hateful shit on there? You aren't impressing anybody on here by "seeing both sides" if you're only seeing the modders side.
Nexus removed a mod that may be (and has obviously been, because otherwise nobody would be making posts about it) perceived as hateful by others and you're over here defending the modders that put that shit on there because "it's political" from Nexus to take the obviously political mod down.
On the other hand you're probably the type preaching about "Well Twitter is allowed to encourage hate speech on their site because it's their website and they're allowed to do whatever they want, you don't have to use it if you feel attacked by that", but Nexus is not? Nexus' site-wide rules don't count because they're "pushing leftist agenda" by removing mods that were never allowed there to begin with?
"Why should NexusMods care if the mods exist?" why do you care so much if it doesn't exist any longer? If you feel that attacked by the removal of an anti-pronouns mod you can just make a new one yourself or download it from somewhere else. Or just not give a fuck/be happy like every other normal functioning human being.
Would you care as much as to reply to this post, if they had instead instead removed a mod that added pronouns to a game? Would that not be imposing political views as well then? Or would you just not care because you care more about making non-binary people feel excluded rather than included?
You're not making a point here. We are making this network a place that is inclusive to people all over the gender spectrum. Defending those that do not, is not making a point.
I do not care to read any more of your replies as your points are easily dismantled even by someone that's as stupid as I am.
If you do reply, just say yes or no to the following question, that I had posed earlier: Would you care this much if they had removed a mod that added pronouns to a game?
Try to think as hard as you can, I do not want to read any excuse for either answer. Just imagine yourself in that situation and tell me.
It's not hateful shit, and I'm not trying to "see both sides," either. I have no quarter for gender ideologues. However, I do think that any person or business (that doesn't have any kind of monopoly status over critical services) has the freedom to refuse to serve anyone they want for any reason they want, so GN is free to take down whatever they want and they don't really owe any of us an explanation.
And, really, I'm not defending the people who made the mod and put it up. They don't really need a defense. I'm just pointing out that the removal of it makes GN either petty activists, or scared of the left.
Obviously gender ideologues perceive it as hateful, but so what? Gender ideologues perceive literally anything they disagree with, no matter how slightly as hateful. It's their entire brand. Would GN host mods for a game if the game itself was "hateful?" Absolutely not. And if a mod whose only function is to remove the ability to arbitrarily select your pronouns is hateful, then why isn't every single game which is supported on GN that does not offer that functionality considered hateful and have all support for it removed? The answer is simple: GN are petty activists and this is performative.
My views on Twitter (et al) haven't changed even after its ownership changed hands from someone who I don't like to someone who I don't like a little bit less. Not that it's on-topic, but I think platforms like Twitter need to decide if they are publishers or platforms and then play by the rules set forth for those that they decided to be, no mixing and matching. §230 of Title 47 needs an overhaul.
I really don't care that much about the mod and this event, in part because I can't afford the game nor the hardware needed to run it. But, I do have opinions on gender ideology and the behavior of public-facing organizations with respect to gender ideology.
I'll reiterate my point: GN are petty activists (or afraid of the left).
Yes, I would care the exact same amount. It's crummy behavior, no matter where it comes from. I can exist in the presence of ideas I don't agree with. I don't have the urge to stamp out, by fiat or coercion, every trace of any belief that differs from mine.
True, but the act does show everybody that they are political activists. Either that, or they're afraid of the left. Either way, it's worth pointing out. It carves out a space for competition.
Removing the mod doesn't make Nexus decent human beings. It makes them petty activists who can't bear the thought of the existence of people who don't subscribe to the same ideology as they do.
Lmao, bruh we already know you’re an asshole, you don’t have to explicitly say you put your ideology above treating people with dignity and respect, we got it.
It's literally gender ideology politics. Outside of that, there is zero reason to take down the mod. It harms nobody. It doesn't even violate their own TOS.
Gender ideology is literally sexual politics. The inclusion of the ability to select your pronouns (as opposed to what, I don't know, them being fixed according to the sex of the generated character?) is sexual politics. Modding that choice out is sexual politics. Removing the mod is sexual politics. Every action taken by all parties in this story is sexual politics.
Sexual Politics - the principles determining the relationship of the sexes; relations between the sexes regarded in terms of power.
Now, tell me where removing the options for pronouns in a video game fits within that definition.
Apparently you can just add “politics” to the end of anything to try and justify discrimination. My mod that removes all black people from the game is just “race politics”, so it’s okay!
All of gender ideology is sexual politics. It's an attack on the conceptual model of the sexes as they are intuitively understood — an attempt to hijack the language that is used to describe the sexes in an attempt to push gender ideology into the mainstream.
I’m sorry man, I wish I could help you. But this… I think you’re in a bit too deep.
Nobody is “hijacking” anything, and nobody is forcefully pushing ideologies on anyone. It’s as simple as groups of people wanting to be treated just as well as anyone else - it’s not any more complicated than that.
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And it is their platform, that's why they care. They can dictate what is and isn't allowed there.
No non-conforming people were protected by this move.
By taking this down, NexusMods communicated that they care about non-conforming people far more than if they had just said it. They are creating an environment where bigotry is removed rather than accepted. Nobody is saying you can’t be a bigot in private with your game, we are saying if you’re going to be a bigot we don’t want you to do it here with us because we care about the people you are excluding/hurting.
Rejecting gender ideology isn't bigotry. Removing it from a game where its present also isn't bigotry. Removing the mod is just performative slacktivism and does nothing to help anyone.
Yall said the same shit about gay people a couple years ago. It was all the same talking points, it’s just slightly modded to fit trans people now. It was bigotry then, it’s bigotry now.
When I say "the alphabet mafia," I'm not talking about gay people, bisexual people, etc. I'm referring to the bully activists who go around stirring shit and spreading lies about society and claim to represent gay and bisexual (etc.) people.
Correct. Because I don't rant against gay people and people telling me to stop are effecting a slander against me. It doesn't help me, and it doesn't help gay people. All they are doing is stirring shit and profiting from it.
I mean, look— I don’t like holier-than-thou activists either, but you need to make a distinction between them, actual activists, and the groups they’re representing. The former is an extreme minority.
Instead of being distrustful of the movement and making yourself look like an ass by preemptively attacking, your energy is better spent not bothering. In the event you encounter a nutjob, go troll them or tell them to pound sand. I promise you, as long as you aren’t on (formerly Twitter) or Tumblr circa 2016, it’s not as common as you think.
There are no "actual activists." There are no causes. The only thing left to fight for is the right to indoctrinate very young school children into gender ideology and show them, graphically, how to be gay.
So no one was homophobic before? The Stonewall Riots just happened because gay people were bored? The big numbers in hate crimes? The government openly saying that they wouldn’t do anything about AIDs because it affected mostly gay people? I’m guessing it was gay people who wrote the laws that got us kicked out of the military. And made it so we couldn’t get married.
I never said that and I don't believe that. But the people who fought for civil rights for gay people aren't today's alphabet mafia.
Oh, and the gay men who fought in the stonewall riots are the reason the G should have always come first, because it was gay men who set the foundation for civil rights for non-straight people. Not the alphabet mafia, and not lesbians.
State interference with and regulation of marriage is, and always was, an abomination. Marriage is a religious and societal institution, and the state only got involved to prevent miscegeny.
The Christian church isn't going to recognize gay weddings, but anyone else is welcome to.
I'd be happy to advocate with you in the pursuit of getting the state out of marriage.
And since the state has been involved for a long time, that means it should be open to anyone. Just as it’s been open to others such as atheists. They weren’t doing it for religious purposes. Nor were kings and queens when they would marry their children to unite kingdoms. Or people who basically married their children in exchange for cattle.
My point isn’t to get the state out of marriage since at this point it is more so a legal document and something that couples do out of love for each other. But the idea that it’s a religious thing is ridiculous. Not to mention its hardly an argument since that means that gay people have even more rights to get married, since some church’s, including Christian ones, will do it. If anything the idea that being gay is a sin has been slowly falling out of Christianity in the same way that interracial marriages were something many Christians were against at one point. So the idea that it’s somehow an argument against same sex marriage is absolutely false, and would only open the doors even more. It doesn’t even have to be religious. Being married is just being married.
“But some church’s wouldn’t count it!” Funny. I was raised Mormon. According to them most straight marriages don’t count either since they weren’t don’t in a Mormon temple. I don’t see others complaining that their church doesn’t recognize it.
Not only was this just moving the goal post, but it also is one that has been discussed many times and has always been torn apart.
I think kinship ties should be and should have always been available to declare or establish at the state level, and calling it a marriage just confuses the issue. I also don't think it should be restricted to couples, either, but it is.
I think the churches should have their business and the state should have its own business. Modern marriage really only serves to invite the state into the bedroom, so I don't even think about it as something that should be fought for. I mean, have at it if you want it, but I think you'll find that it just invites more problems than it solves. I don't recommend anyone ever get married in 2023.
Marriage refers to two things - (1) a legal contract between two people, mediated by the state, and (2) societal and/or religious acceptance of two people as a married couple. Nowadays, in most parts of the world, only the first matters for most purposes. So the state should recognise all marriages, but religions and society are free to have their own conditions as long as they do not harass people they don’t like.
Being black isn’t political, until bigots like you make it political.
Being female isn’t political, until bigots like you make it political.
Being queer isn’t political, until bigots like you make it political.
Every “identity” I’ve ever been given has come through violent conservative oppression. Sometimes I’m the group they like - sometimes I’m the group they hate. But I’ve never fucking asked for the distinction.
Gender, religion, sexuality, ethnicity… these matter as much as hair color, until some asshole decides there’s a right answer. Every flavor of “identity politics” that conservatives screech about is an abuse they invented and hurled at people until those victims stood up and shouted “Motherfucker I am.”
You don’t need pride until someone’s tried to make you feel lesser.
Get our of our goddamn way, and stop imagining you’re the good guy. You are the entire problem. You can stop, at any time.
No. You’re just a bigot who doesn’t like to think they are. You like the ideas, but have a problem when a negative term gets attached to it. It’s like when people weren’t “racist.” They were “race realists.” It was racism with a new logo. Similar to how when people were homophibic, it wasn’t “bigotry”, it was “Think of the children” and “the gay agenda.”
Everybody has an agenda. Gender ideologues are the bigots, not those who reject it. Gender ideologues maintain their fantasy of not being a bigot by accusing everyone around them of not only shit they aren't guilty of, but shit the ideologue, themselves, are guilty of. Gender ideologues are sick people, and everyone around them is not the way they say they are.
Today's gender ideology and race baiting bullshit have nothing to do with actual civil rights. Today's race-baiters are literally, openly calling for segregation.
It’s the exact same. You think trans problems are dumb, you don’t understand why “separate but equal” is problematic, and you spent too much time licking lead paint in your formative years.
Because the mod itself is intended as a form of political grandstanding. So that bigots can download it thousands of times and then hold it up and say 'look how many people are modding the woke out of BG3' in an attempt to discourage inclusive content in other titles.
Well, sure. Lots of people don't want woke garbage in their games. When it tops the download list the number of people who reject gender ideology is revealed. That's the real problem with it. It scares the shit out of the left because it breaks the illusion of social acceptance the left fights so ferociously to maintain by force and fiat.
When you decide at your choosing what they are, instead of by a deterministic set of conditions, they are, by definition, arbitrary. That's what arbitrary means. It means you choose them.
Here's the thing: They are chosen by a deterministic set of conditions. Just because you don't understand what those conditions are does not make the terms arbitrary.
Also, that's not what "arbitrary" means, either. For somebody who seems to be so uptight about the definitions of words, you sure do invent a lot of your own definitions.
No, they are chosen by "I identify as..." and then they make their choice. That is literally arbitrary. I don't know how you have been using the word, but you could look it up in a dictionary to see how people have historically used the word.
So you acknowledge that there are deterministic sets of conditions after all. Great, we're making progress!
Also:
based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system
It's not random choice or personal whim. There is a reason and a system. Again, just because you lack the understanding does not mean the rest of the world is as riddled with brain worms as you are.
Not how it works. Clearly you've never actually met a trans person and actually had a conversation with them and tried to understand their life, have you?
There are a couple of "trans" people in my life. They have one sex but feel as though they are the other sex. I feel sorry for them the discord they feel in their identity, but beyond that I really don't give a shit. One of them works with me and the other slices my lunchmeat at the deli. I don't press them about anything, and I don't talk about it. I actually use their preferred pronouns because I respect them both as individuals, but internally, I believe they are both men who think they feel like women. I'm not even convinced they actually feel like women. I think they've been lied to scummy activists all throughout their public education. Gender is made-up bullshit.
I respect them both as individuals, but internally, I believe they are both men who think they feel like women. I’m not even convinced they actually feel like women.
Clearly, you don’t respect them.
I have more trans friends than you probably have friends, and it’s never once crossed my mind to question their identity. Even if you’re not saying the quiet part out loud, you’re sure as shit thinking bigoted thoughts.
Wow, you are a hateful piece of shit. Do you honestly think that people just decide one day to make an extreme life change, knowing that they’ll endure lifelong ostracism, ridicule, and condescension from brainless bigots like you, all for attention or “ideology”?
I sincerely hope you have trans kids who end up marrying black and brown communists. Hail Satan!
Bigots usually haven’t. It’s easier to spew hate when you’re not standing in front of someone who will happily knock your lights out for being an asshole.
If I feel like eating pizza today, that desire comes from deterministic conditions. Me choosing to have pizza is still an arbitrary choice. If I had a cheeseburger instead of pizza because it's cheeseburger day, even if I want pizza, that's deterministic. You could argue that the schedule is arbitrary, and that's fair, but deciding for yourself what pronouns you are going to have used in your regard regardless of your sex is arbitrary.
I understand better than gender ideologues the difference between sex and gender, and unlike both the left and the right, I meticulously never use them interchangeably.
I can understand that having pronouns or nonbinary or trans characters in games can be a bit of a culture shock. As a culture we're beginning to grow more overall accepting of these people that have been here all along, but never felt comfortable to "be a seen part of society" out of fear. The same sort of thing happened, or is still happening, with homosexuality, though that's further along the acceptance curve than trans/nonbinary.
Eventually it won't be so obviously "woke garbage" that sticks out to you as something noticeable and startling, and it'll be just another feature of the game like anything else, just another NPC like any other, but that one gets called "they" instead of him or her. It takes time for it all to become normalized and not be something you raise eyebrows at and feel upset by. You may always wonder sometimes what gender someone is identifying as when it may not be obvious, but it will become easier to simply ask them, or be okay with not knowing, it's okay to not know.
I'm not going to pretend that mentally working through these things isn't a part of this whole process, but trying to somehow fight back against it by calling it all garbage and refusing to extend the hand to understand where it's all coming from is... inappropriate, we all need to get along, we all live on this planet together and the only way to make it the best it can be is to try and understand each other.
Sure, you may have a point in there about desiring a platform where people can upload any mod they like, and that could totally be a thing, Nexus Mods doesn't want that to be their thing, specifically, and whether you're okay with that or not is your perspective, and I'm okay with that, but you should try and understand why Nexus is taking that stance. Nonbinary and trans people are on the back foot, culturally, so it's clear that many places will take a stand to hard defend their representation because they're so far behind the "biological genders" and could use a helping hand.
I didn't say that understanding and agreement are the same. What I wanted was for that user to understand where the other side was coming from, and acknowledge that, and if they still had a different opinion, then okay, but I just wanted to try and explain the side I'm on in a less directly hostile way than the other commenters are.
You make some logical points, I won't go into my opinion since it already seems clear, hope you have a nice night, genuinely, people should be able to discuss this stuff maturely.
Hi, woke garbage here. Very trans. Enby too. Just sitting here existing at you. Existing so hard, it probably hurts you just knowing about it. I hope it does, 'cause you're a prick and you deserve it ^.^
Wow, I'm the only person that bellend didn't reply to. I feel special 🤣 Everycritter else gets a fresh pile of horsecrap, I don't even get a downvote. Works fine for me, I guess.
I asked them a yes or no question and they replied with a rant, that I still didn't bother to read (because they didn't reply with either "yes" or "no") and now they're accusing me of actually having read the rant. Very reasonable people 💀👍
Bigotry is a political opinion, but the idea that all political opinions deserve identical respect is really dumb.
Some people’s ideas are bad, actually. It is fine and good to tell them where to shove it.
The kneejerk demand for “civility” confuses polite responses for appropriate responses. Some people are monsters. Some people need to hear, “fuck off.” That is the correct attitude for a worrying number of online interactions, and if moderators won’t step up and proactively remove the bigoted propagandist time-vampires who deserve it, the least they can do is stay out of the way. ‘What you chose to say is fucking awful’ cannot possibly be more of a personal attack than being told ‘everyone like you is inherently broken.’
Are people seriously bitching that a handhelds performance doesn’t match current PlayStation or Xbox specs which are ten times it’s size?
If the switch 2 is a handheld, it has so many more physical, power, and heat constraints and I am impressed that it even matches the previous gens consoles.
So what about people who do want to use they/them? Adults could install software like this for their kids and use the mod to deny their kid the right to choose what pronoun they want to use.
People are welcome to mod games in whatever way they want, but Nexusmods has zero obligation to host anything, let alone content that violates their TOS.
It’s not the first time they banned mods like this. Nexus had the same shit storm last year when they banned Spiderman mods that tried to remove pride flags. It’s mentioned in the same article here as well.
The only reason it is getting this much outrage is because of the same reason last time, this is the hottest game on the market right now, just like Spiderman was when it came out for the first time on PC.
Huh, just considering practicality, how many new characters would one have to create in order to save rather than waste downloading this? Given the time required to download, read, and set up, I’d guess somewhere in the range of 20-30 characters.
Speedrunners might download a mod to skip setup entirely, not a single option. Of the millions who purchased starfield, perhaps a few dozen might use this ergonomically. Neat.
Practice mods are occasionally used if, say, there’s a tricky section 1.5 hours in. With route highlighting or landscape deemphasizing, if necessary. Speedrunning has slowed to a crawl in the last decade so that seems unlikely.
It is not a big deal. It doesnt have to be. Its just a small mod with a small change that some people apparently wanted for their experience. They didnt demand to change the game. I dont see problem with choosing pronouns, but I also dont see a problem with changing pointless stuff in your game.
Just pick your pronouns when you create your character. These are people getting their panties in a twist because they are being reminded that other people can choose different pronouns.
These are people getting their panties in a twist because they are being reminded that other people can choose different pronouns.
That’s nothing new. The vast majority of far-right reactionaries know exactly zero trans people. They’re getting upset because a stranger, who exists entirely in their imagination, may have an opinion about their own body that the far-right have not approved as “okay to have”.
Of course, there’s probably deeper reasons that they won’t say out loud. What if they accidentally find a “man” attractive? What if they have to treat a casual acquaintance with basic human decency?
I'd imagine for some, the problem is being reminded they too can choose. And they've had the option to choose for a long time.
Honestly, that was my biggest issue the idea of asking other people their pronoun was sort of a trend (at least according to the rightwing media? idk; I've never once seen a person ask another person their pronouns in IRL). For some reason I never wondered why I, as a "cis man", I'd be afraid of such a question (especially since I was the type to like when people mistook me for being gay, so it wasn't like I was afraid of having my "masculinity questioned" or was anti-LGBT).
Considering their policy doesn't allow for other stuff like this, yeah I am not surprised.
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Reminds me of the time when a Spiderman mod removed the VERY few instances of a pride flag in a recreation of NEW YORK CITY and a Skyrim mod that removed any potential gay romances that only occur when wearing a very specific amulet (including a single dead skeleton couple off the beaten path.)
Those got booted as well cause.....come on now. Its blatantly targeting a group of people about their sexuality and gender who have BARELY any presence to begin with in these games.
Starfield is even more egregious as its LITERALLY just a menu option and the rare use in dialogue....
Really pathetic and sad people would even feel the need to make them to begin with. Let alone feel the need to upload them to a platform.
I‘m legit happy as long as it can do 720p60fps for stuff like TotK in portable without any upsampling and whatnot.
I‘m not playing Nintendo cause of cutting edge graphics but because of cutting edge gameplay and entertainment. Doesn‘t matter how realistic a game looks when Mario Odyssey runs laps around it in terms of the fun it provides.
Just… provide backwards compatability, please. And as a bonus I‘d love a way for „old“ games to get better resolution and fps ideally without patches (cause we know the majority of games would never get patched).
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