Submitted 4 days ago by VetOfTheSeas@discuss.online to gaming@beehaw.org
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/gog-apologizes-for-emailing-nazi-runes-to-its-followers/
An apology is meaningless.
Tell us how and why two koppa were placed together, knowing they rendered incorrectly and even if they didn’t would still look like double sig runes. There was nothing Slavic cultured about two of them next to each other and the excuses made so far are unacceptable lies, who made that decision and why?
Until this is properly explained, I am never using GOG again.
The high seas welcome another mariner. 🤘🏼
How many layers of people did this go through? Between their history of transphobia and now this, they are painting a pretty bad picture of themselves
I’m not aware of their history of transphobia, could you share an article talking about it?
Of course! polygon.com/…/gog-twitter-wontbeerased-hashtag/
polygon.com/…/cyberpunk-2077-trans-advertisement-…
kotaku.com/cyberpunk-2077-tweets-transphobic-joke…
I included CD Projekt in there since GoG is owned by them
There was also a period where transphobic comments in their forums seemed to take longer for mods to delete but I can’t find anyone talking about that.
Also of note, GOGs sister company, CD Project RED, makers of Cyberpunk 2077, have been criticized for their handling of Trans people and response to trans critics as well covered some here
I would bet my last donut that the screwup has something to do with AI generating at least part of their email content.
Doesn’t matter if it was originally added by an LLM (AI doesn’t exist) or not. They stated they knew what it looked like and that’s why they didn’t send it out in Germany. That makes them fully responsible and aware of the message they were sending
Sorry, I missed where I stated that it mattered.
I havent received any newsletter from GOG addressing their fuck up. So all this is, is PR noise to placate those, who are looking for it, not a sincere apology and change of way.
Sad to learn really, so nor more money to them it seems.
Probably drafted by Grok
Remember guys… an employee likely did this, not representative of the company as a whole. Still… NAZI SCUM! Nazism is a growing issue and it cannot be tolerated.
That employee should be fired. Part of the responsibility of a social media/brand manager is not bringing the brand into disrepute and not making it look like it supports Nazism and as part of that they should have a passing familiarity with controversial words and symbols within their market. Fire them, announce you fired them for this egregious behavior, condemn Nazism and we’ll accept it. Anything short of that is just “sorry we got caught and a lot of people got upset about our Nazi dog whistling”.
Really? The internet is always so quick to jump to extremes. Someone making a mistake at work doesn’t mean they need to be fired. Yes they are responsible, but if they didn’t do it on purpose then why do they deserve to lose their livelihood over a stupid email? Some compassion could be in order here, they will probably never hear the end of it at the work water cooler anyway and to me it seems like enough of a punishment. Assuming this was some deliberate dog whistling is just bad faith.
Fact is it wasn’t sent in Germany where Nazi symbols are a criminal offense and that tells you whoever did this knew.
Does it? Somebody wrote the email, then the email was sent to translators for different markets. The German translators noticed the problem and decided not to send the email, but didn’t report it back, or reported it back too late. What makes you so sure the person who wrote the email was made aware of this? Maybe they were, I don’t know, but you can’t just act like you are sure. I worked at bigger companies enough to know that things fall through the cracks all the time and trying to reach a department in another country is often a multi-day effort with no guarantee of success.
While not entirely incorrect, the simple fact that they knew ahead of time, and were clearly aware enough to avoid sending it to Germany, thus making them complicit at best.
No. Fuck them.
What…what the hell?
On further research, I had no idea CD Projekt Red sold GoG Games. CD Projekt sold GOG to its original co-founder, Michał Kiciński, in December 2025 for approximately $25.2 million. I’m downloading what I bought over the years and closing my account.
checks email
Yup, I got this one too.
I’m sure this is a small mistake and not…oh Jesus Christ
DdCno1@beehaw.org 4 days ago
Holy hell, this does not look like an accident. This combination of runes does not just happen. Whoever did this at the company thought they could get away with it.
GammaGames@beehaw.org 4 days ago
It wasn’t, this is their second apology! From the first (with added emphasis):
mrmaplebar@fedia.io 4 days ago
"We noticed it was some nazi shit but we did it anyway, except in Germany where it's illegal." Pretty wild defense.
Don_alForno@feddit.org 4 days ago
That’s not even true. Am German, got the mail. (To a “.de” e-mail adress btw, so it’s not like it would have been hard to filter.)
DdCno1@beehaw.org 4 days ago
The S rune is not the only issue. By combination of runes, I meant the whole thing. All of these runes have been used by Nazis and extensively so. While the rune used by the SS is the most well known, this is like a best-of of which runes Heinrich Himmler and modern Nazis are especially fond of.
RickyRigatoni@piefed.zip 4 days ago
It’s worse to remind germans they were nazis than to blast nazi symbols at the rest of the world apparently.