'The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt' Steam Forum Bans Discussion On Woke, Anti-Woke, and Real-World Politics
A moderator for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Steam forum banned discussion on woke, anti-woke, and real world politics.
In a pinned post on the forum, Moderator Sardukhar announced that woke, anti-woke, and real-world politics were banned.
He wrote, “These topics are -forbidden- here. IF you post them or want to talk about them and do it here, your post will be removed. You may be banned. Please keep this in mind before posting. Thank you and let's all look forward to the Witcher IV!”
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This ban comes in the wake of at least one player getting banned from The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Steam forum for “hateful, misogynistic, abusive invective” after criticizing Ciri’s character design and the decision to make her a witcher in The Witcher 4.
X user Pirat_Nation shared a screenshot of one player receiving a permanent ban for writing, “They made Ciri an ugly, generic, self-insert 25% male. They story they chose for this trailer is yet another oppressed women fanfic. They already ruined the lore because Ciri is not a witcher, never underwent the mutations so it makes no sense to give her witcher eyes and abilities.”
The player added, “Just another DEI infested fanfic game from people that don’t know the original material, don’t care, and want to ruin what you enjoy. We have seen this pattern again and again over the last 10 years.”
“And we already know what the fake responses will be: ‘Don’t like it, don’t buy it,’ ‘It’s not released yet,’ ‘You just don’t like women’ (even though they themselves have turned the female character into a man),” he concluded. “How many times do we need to teach you this lesson? Get woke, go broke. RIP CDPR.”
The player was banned with the ban reason stating, “Hateful, misogynistic, abusive invective. Off-topic culture war spam-bait in addition. Clearly uninterested in any form of civil and/or constructive discourse whatsoever.”
All of this comes following the release of The Witcher 4 trailer, which has been criticized by a significant portion of gamers.
The Witcher 4 Game Director Sebastian Kalemba and Narrative Director Philipp Weber addressed the criticism in an interview with Eurogamer.
Weber was asked specifically about the criticism facing making Ciri the main protagonist. He answered, “I think there's many very valid worries and responses, because I think a lot of them come out of passion, and I think a lot of those questions are also questions that we asked ourselves. So we really, again, say that we are beholden to the lore, the canon of the books by Andrzej Sapkowski, the three previous Witcher games, and we'd want to take that seriously, and we really want to respect that. So all the answers we basically want to give in The Witcher 4 are in line with this attitude.We're not suddenly making up stuff just because we want to. We really want to take these things seriously.”
“So I can really understand if some people, you know, might have wished to play another game with Geralt - like I can say myself, I could make games about Geralt until the day I die, and I would probably die happy. But I think for me, and I think for all of us [at CDPR], it's also just really exciting to see all the opportunities that Ciri brings us, both with her character, and also by just virtue of who she is, what we can do with her in terms of the gameplay as well,” he added. “So I think the best answer for us, for those people that really are worried right now, is basically to show them, when we are ready, that we really do this well and with care. And I think - I hope - we can then convince them with the game itself. Because I think actions speak louder than words.”
Kalemba also answered, “Yeah, well said. And on top of that, just please remember that we are also not only developers, but we are also gamers, right? And, you know, we've started with the second protagonist already in The Wild Hunt. And so there was already a tease. So we really [are] all about making sure such calls are very educated calls. And we really believe, as Philip already said, that we also have so much of a great story to tell with Ciri, and she deserves that.”
Kalemba and Executive Producer Malgorzata Mitręga also addressed the criticism in an interview with Skill Up following the release of the trailer.
When asked about how they will juggle the lore with making Ciri a witcher despite the multiple different endings in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Mitrega said, “I think that what is a huge challenge for us is on the one hand we want, of course, to go with the player with sentiment, right? Feel them going home at the same time showcase new stuff, a new experience, and amazing game to push the boundaries of the quality and storytelling and then go to the new audience.”
She continued, “I already read the comments that people are afraid of, ‘if you go to everybody it will be a mix, do we still got it?’ So you need to trust. We are storytellers. This is our priority always. And we go in-depth with that. We are going with the universal experience of the storytelling and she is just a character that will give us more opportunity to do that.”
“And, yes, we want to go to both players that know us already and for the new audience because you can start the game without having any knowledge actually about the previous [games] even about the world. You can just start it as a new entering and it will be an introduction to The Witcher world. So it’s totally fine. You can, of course, go back to The Witcher after. But I think that we do have an idea for that, you just have to wait to experience that,” she concluded.
Kalemba added, “I can even add just to calm some people down is that we trust the process. We are storytellers. The most important thing and I believe you can experience this in the trailer is that the very core motivation behind making this trailer was actually to make it in a way that you will care. That you will at some point care about Mioni, about Ciri, about this final feeling of, ‘oh my god, I did my best but I couldn’t control everything. Dumb people followed by superstitions. Bloody hell. And then I couldn’t save her.’ This is the way. We trust the process. We make emotions. We pay so much respect to characters we create. We make them believable alive. Characters that will stay with you forever. So those are like real people. This is the way we make stories.”
He then reiterated, “So I can calm everyone down here there’s going to be an amazing story had and we’ve created emotional stakes that are not coincidental whatever, very well thought out.”
What do you make of discussions about woke, anti-woke, and real world politics being banned from The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Steam forum?
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What he calls "oppressed women fanfic" I call feminist fantasy. It's where 100 lb women toss around 200lb men without having any supernatural or extraterrestrial origins to explain this unrealistic strength. Even highly trained women in the military and the intel agencies can't toss around me twice their size.
Sadly a majority of women in the Millennials generation and younger have been poisoned by feminist ideology and they genuinely believe they don't need men and are boss babes who destroy men. Yet if you removed all the special/preferential treatment and programs in place to give women an edge over male competitors they'd throw a fit and call it misogyny.
I find it interesting than in most of the stories we find it is women, feminist women, involved in the decision making process. This is what happens when hiring is based on ones race or sex instead of their skills and knowledge. The women who helped with the UNCHARTED games is proof that the industry did employ at one time women who knew what they were doing. Since the woke wars started we've seen an uptick in the number of people hired because of Diversity and it is going to destroy the industry if it doesn't stop. No amount of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is going to save an industry dead set on preaching to it;s customer base instead of providing what those customers want.
"What woke activist in gaming hasn't proclaimed that their work is going to be amazing only to have it then fail and sometimes epically? It's equal to the number of executives who told the truth about mass layoffs ahead of the planned layoff. It's equal the number of times a politician has been honest about what they plan to do. In other words, zero to rare.