"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.

PS:

We're still closed, fuck the admins, the team here hopes your IPO crashes and the company burns.

For those who want out before Spez has crashed it all: We are still active on Lemmy.

PPS:

Free Palestine

Hello fellow Ghazelles,

We held a vote on Ghazi's future and the results are in.

While the results may seem close, there may be a certain selection bias going on there. Insofar as Ghazelles who are tired of Reddit's enshittification may already have left the site, thus did not participate in the vote.

51,9% of respondants do not want Ghazi to leave Reddit

45,8% voted to leave it permanently restricted (40,3% wanted to go back to normal, 13% wanted to go private again)

54,1% voted that Lemmy.Blahaj.Zone should be the new home of Ghazi, if a replacement is required

Thus the mod team has decided to keep the subreddit restricted from now on as a permanent archive and not return to normal. There is already a replacement on Lemmy.Blahaj.Zone which you can follow by creating an account there or from other parts of the Fediverse if you need your daily scroll through Ghazi.

We will also keep up our Discord that Ghazelles can join if they wish to. [Note: Contact us through modmail. We will keep security checks in place which means that people have to have some sort of history on Ghazi or similar subreddits in order to join.]

The decision to archive Ghazi did not come to us lightly, but ultimately most of the active mods have been frustrated by Reddit's actions.

Recent developments show clearly that Reddit doesn’t care about mods, users or communities. Mods of r/Blind can’t mod their own community anymore, a subreddit which was meant to be for and by blind people.
And the mods of r/IAmA wrote a succinct summary that makes it very obvious that this pattern of behavior has lasted for years and that it makes no sense to invest tons of work into a site which is now threatening to take away communities from the people who created and tended to them for years.

Under these circumstances, some of Ghazi’s mods are considering leaving Reddit behind entirely.

Still other members of the mod team have volunteered to remain on Reddit and keep an eye on the subreddit just in case. It remains to be seen how Reddit will react to keeping subreddits restricted and what policies they pull out of their ass in order to keep the site functioning. If possible we wish to avoid a hostile takeover in order to protect subscriber information and not let the subreddit get filled with spam.

Ultimately though, this is the end of GamerGhazi as we know it on Reddit and that probably means that the Ghazi community will move on from here. We hope that you had a good time and thank all of you for having been on this journey with us!

Fuck capitalism! Stay safe out there!

We have now received the following message from Reddit's Admins:

We are aware that you have chosen to close your community at this time. Mods have a right to take a break from moderating, or decide that you don’t want to be a mod anymore. But active communities are relied upon by thousands or even millions of users, and we have a duty to keep these spaces active.

Subreddits belong to the community of users who come to them for support and conversation. Moderators are stewards of these spaces and in a position of trust. Redditors rely on these spaces for information, support, entertainment, and connection.

Our goal here is to ensure that existing mod teams establish a path forward to make sure your subreddit is available for the community that has made its home here. If you are willing to reopen and maintain the community, please take steps to begin that process. Many communities have chosen to go restricted for a period of time before becoming fully open, to avoid a flood of traffic.

If this community remains private, we will reach out soon with information on what next steps will take place.

We are temporarily putting the sub in Restricted mode to give us time to discuss next steps.

For context: Reddit is currently retaliating against mods and subreddits which have participated or are still participating in the protest to the API changes. Reddit has removed mods who do not obey their orders and often removed messages from the mods to the subscribers related to the protest. The admins are punishing anyone who refuses to return to operations as they were before the protest happened.

Therefore the current mod team is threatened to be removed by the Reddit admins at any point. Spez has also specified that he wants to push through plans which allow subscribers to remove mods, which opens up smaller subreddits to hostile takeovers by larger subreddits. In the case of Ghazi, you can probably imagine what that could mean. This is a risk that most members of the mod team are not willing to take.

We currently maintain temporary replacements on Raddle and Blahaj.Zone. Feel free to join these, if you want to have an alternative to Reddit. Both of these will remain active, until - at least - a final decision on Ghazi’s future has been made.

https://raddle.me/f/ghazi

https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/c/ghazi

Please go to this Google poll in order to vote on Ghazi’s future: https://forms.gle/amu6xg9PPcybc2Ty7

2 days ago we stickied a Modpost polling users of our sub about whether or not we should participate in the protest against Reddit’s plan to dramatically increase the price to make calls to their API. 188 users voted, and the results were 176 Yes (94%) to 12 No (6%).

In light of that, we will be shuttering r/GamerGhazi and r/AmalaNetwork for 48 hours starting June 12. Thank you to everyone who participated in the poll.

Ecumene Aztec is slated for a 2025 release and had a relatively low key reveal recently, with a good old fashioned trailer on the internet rather than a showcase or at Summer Game Fest. It looked intriguing, but since then everything has unraveled quickly.

The premise of the game is (perhaps what should ‘was’ - more on that later) relatively simple. Taking obvious inspiration from Ghost of Tsushima, you play as an Aztec warrior who protects his land from the invading Spanish conquistadors. The early gameplay footage looked a little janky, owing to the fact this is a small team working on its first game that won’t be ready for at least two years, but there was promise. It was Ghost of Tsushima with an Aztec skin, but then many called Tsushima just Assassin’s Creed with a samurai skin when it was revealed, and this was a fresh perspective.

While there were potential pitfalls with being so heavily influenced for a first game, and the attempts to look and feel like a triple-A game without the budget, it was intriguing. Unfortunately, it piqued the interest of the wrong people. Though history is rarely black and white, in the battle of ‘the people who live in a place’ and ‘the people who invade it for adventure and riches’, there’s a fairly clean ‘good guy’ and ‘bad guy’. Some, however, don’t see it that way.

As reported by The Verge, shortly after the trailer went live a site appeared under publisher Giantscraft’s name. This site is not affiliated with the publisher themselves, so presumably was set up in the wake of the trailer as some form of revenge. On the site, there is a quote from famous conquistador Hernán Cortés, an emblem of the Cross of Burgundy, and various Spanish imperialist memes. The Cross is used in the modern day by far-right South American groups.

The negative reaction from the loudest, most toxic parts of the internet did not stop there. In the wake of the trailer, Giantscraft has announced it will be changing the game to allow you to play either as the Aztec warrior repelling the violent white invaders, or as the violent white invaders themselves. This change was accompanied by a PR statement to The Verge:

“It was not planned. However we saw that about 40 percent of [the] audience says that [they] would like to have [the] choice to join [the] conquistadors, so we might actually try to give this possibility. The game is not political in anyway[sic] and never will be, it is history FICTION.”

https://www.thegamer.com/upcoming-aztec-game-changes-entire-premise-to-appease-nationalists/