I look up game info on the steam forums several times a week, and I have found them significantly less contentious than lemmy. I don’t remember ever seeing a “woke” thread. I assume it’s because it’s largely contained to AAA games and I’m usually playing indie games?
In any case I think it’s an exaggeration to call them “unusable”.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 days ago
I’ve seen it in every single indie game I’ve played that even has a whiff of lgbtq+ tolerance.
Example from literally yesterday: that new Kings Field-like called Queen’s Domain has at least one active thread about the gender of the MC even though it’s first person (and like PS1 graphics). They are concerned that it might be a girly-looking man. I’m not kidding.
Another one from a week or two ago is from a new traditional roguelike called Roguefort (awesome game, btw. It’s like Caves of Qud, but with cheese-based magic).
When the game was released, I believe within a day, there were posts whining about pronouns. The characters in the game are literally like 10 pixels high, so it’s very useful information to know an NPC’s gender when speaking to them.
But apparently enough people made a stink about it that the dev, in a moment of weakness, removed them.
To his credit, he put them back in almost immediately after some backlash and affirmed his support of trans people, and I tend to believe him he seems genuine.
This is a scourge on Steam. I fucking hate being a gamer in 2026. I hate the connotation it now has.