• Azzu@lemm.ee
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    11 months ago

    Just to be clear for everyone here, the mod author effectively stated the goal was to reduce diversity.

    There are other mods that change gender of characters that state no such thing, which are still up. It’s really only the intent here that mattered.

  • ShaunaTheDead@kbin.social
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    11 months ago

    To those that are saying they don’t see a problem with this mod. Let me put it to you this way. Instead of a mod that turned one gay woman into a straight man what if it turned one black character into a white character?

    There literally was a mod like that in Stardew Valley that turned Demetrius into a white character, and it was rightfully deleted from Nexus mods. If someone has that much of a problem with a character being a different race, sex, gender, or sexual identity then they’re clearly bigoted no matter what they say to the contrary.

    It’s gay erasure, and it’s bigotry, plain and simple.

    • muse@kbin.social
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      11 months ago

      The creator of the mod actually wanted to do just that. He wanted to turn Wyll white, erase all LGBT references, and make Mizhena a trans person who regretted their decision and detransitioned.

    • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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      11 months ago

      Well there’s never anything wrong with customizing a single player game, I fully support Nexus banning whatever they see fit, especially on these grounds. They have no duty to platform content they rightfully see as reprehensible

    • Lowlee Kun@feddit.de
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      11 months ago

      I would say so too but my problem was not my best buddies being gay in general or even flirting with me but the awkwardness of having to straight up reject them. It is not bad to have this as a second hand experience in a game but i can see how people do not like it. I suffered through the awkward feeling of telling Gale off but i wish there was a more clear friendship route to begin with. Again, i dont mind flirting or my friend being homosexual and attracted to me. I just wish i could give hints that this is one sided like i would irl. Not sure in what way the mod did it and i see why it might be taken down but also its not like this mod will vanish because of it.

      • FLemmingO@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

        It’s funny how much this comment mirrors the experience of LGBT people left and right. Do you think it’s not awkward for a lesbian to “have to straight up reject” their male “friends” who come on to them? Or gay men and their female “friends”, or asexuals and literally anyone.

        • Lowlee Kun@feddit.de
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          11 months ago

          I sure cant judge whether rejection by the same sex is worse but that has little to do with that i dont like to have to reject people so why would i lile it when a game i enjoy, with characters that i care about simulate these unpleasent parts of life. Its like saying a game that induces diarreah is just simulating real life (i know this is a very bad comparrison). I dont care about the sex of the person i reject, i simply hate letting people i care about down. And i dont like this part about the game, shame on me.

          • FLemmingO@lemm.ee
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            11 months ago

            I certainly don’t mean to shame you for what seems to be a desire to play the game without being propositioned for sex at all. That seems to me to be a completely different thing than wanting to remove a particular sexuality from the game but leaving others intact.

      • osarusan@kbin.social
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        11 months ago

        I suffered through the awkward feeling of telling Gale off

        This happens in real life too, though.

        And the dialog gives you the options to turn him down, just like in real like you’d have a “dialog option” to turn down a gay person who hits on you. And in real life, it’s awkward just like it is in game.

        All sorts of uncomfortable things happen in the game. Friends die. Children get murdered. Girls get kidnapped and used as baby incubators. Gnomes are forced into slavery. A hobgoblin fucks a ogre in a barn. As much as people don’t want to experience those things in real life, you don’t see mods deleting them. Yet people can’t seem to figure out that making a special case for the gayness is quite actually gay erasure. They’re fine with countless uncomfortable things, buy a bisexual character giving them eyes is too icky to handle??

        People need to grow up and stop making excuses for homophobia that they wouldn’t make for anything else.

    • EatATaco@lemm.ee
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      11 months ago

      If there were a mod that replaced the sex of a straight character you make them gay, would you consider someone definitely a bigot for using it?

      • starman2112@sh.itjust.works
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        11 months ago

        Nah, because as straight people we’ve never actually faced any hardship because of our orientation. Maybe if the idea that straight people shouldn’t exist, if one of the major political parties in my country wanted to legalize electrocuting us for being straight, if most of the major religions said we should be tortured to death, if there were people seriously debating about whether we should be allowed to marry someone of the opposite sex, I’d say that mod would be bigoted

        • EatATaco@lemm.ee
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          11 months ago

          So intent has nothing to do with it? One is a bigot based solely on the relative hardship two communities have faced. If in gay and want to play a character that reflects my sexuality, I’m not a bigot for making it happen. But if I’m straight and want to play a character that represents my sexuality, and I make that happen, I’m a bigot?

          • starman2112@sh.itjust.works
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            11 months ago

            But if I’m straight and want to play a character that represents my sexuality, and I make that happen, I’m a bigot?

            Of course not. That’s not what happened here, and is irrelevant. Nobody would care about a mod that makes otherwise unromanceable characters romanceable. This mod changed two NPCs for no reason other than the creator doesn’t like seeing gay people.

            You understand there’s a difference between someone making a character gay because they like seeing gay characters, and someone making a character straight because they don’t like seeing gay characters, right?

            • EatATaco@lemm.ee
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              11 months ago

              That’s not what happened here, and is irrelevant.

              Irrelevant to what happened, but not irrelevant to what the poster I was responding to was talking about.

              You understand there’s a difference between someone making a character gay because they like seeing gay characters, and someone making a character straight because they don’t like seeing gay characters, right?

              Absolutely. You are hitting my point here: intent. If someone is gay and changes it because they don’t want to see straight people, that’s bigoted too. If someone makes the character straight because they like seeing straight characters, that’s not bigoted.

              I get that the mod maker is actually a bigot, in not challenging that. I’m challenging the claim that by switching from gay to straight makes you a bigot.

              • Ender of Games@sh.itjust.works
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                11 months ago

                I’m challenging the claim that by switching from gay to straight makes you a bigot.

                Please, I would LOVE for you to source this claim

                • EatATaco@lemm.ee
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                  11 months ago

                  How could I source it? I challenged an opinion with another opinion.

    • tal@lemmy.today
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      11 months ago

      I have no problem with a mod that changes someone’s sexual orientation, someone’s race, someone’s species, or just plain removes or adds new characters. Why would I care how someone else is playing a game?

      • deweydecibel@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        You don’t have to care. No one does. No one is blocking this from working.

        It’s just not being listed on Nexus.

        Moreover this mod wasn’t giving options to players to choose how they wanted to play, it was changing very specific things and advertising it. Nexus doesn’t care to let them use their platform to advertise a mod made for a very specific audience of really shitty people.

  • CaptainEffort@sh.itjust.works
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    11 months ago

    This is hardly news, Nexus has removed mods like these in the past from games like Spider-man and Skyrim. Their rules are pretty straightforward when it comes to stuff like this.

    • soggy_kitty@sopuli.xyz
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      11 months ago

      Online news stories primary goal is to gain viewership and “customer reaction” measured by traffic figures. Although I agree this shouldn’t be news, it is undeniably a successful news story due to the interactivity it’s creating.

      As long as people are triggered into clicking on that link, it’ll be seen as “what the people want” and therefore “good news story” by the media.

      Yes I’m aware I’ve just described click bait to someone who clearly would understand the concept, I apologise lol

  • Mikina@programming.dev
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    11 months ago

    I don’t have any issues with diversity and inclusivity, and support it however I can.

    But I don’t really see the problem with this mod? It’s a honest question, I’ve just read the article, and the Nexus mod answer doesn’t make much sense to me. I mean there are literally mods that change every character in Skyrim to females, how is that different? (I didn’t log in to see the if the mod is active, but I’m sure there’s a lot of “we change this character to female” mods for any game).

    And more importantly, why not let anyone do whatever they want with their game, and enjoy it however they want? Or was it similar to the Starfield pronouns mod, where the creator went on a hateful rant in the mod description, and acted like a total dick, spewing their bullshit intorelant propaganda? Then, the removal would be understandable. Otherwise, it’s just counter-productive and only serves to even more divide people and turn them against eachother, and feels like an unnecessary witch-hunt and a PR stunt.

    But please correct me if I’m wrong or missing something, there’s probably some context that I don’t have.

    • JeffKerman1999@sopuli.xyz
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      11 months ago

      Nah this mod was making trans people into trans people that regretted it. They planned on removing all the people of colour because of “realism” and do other assorted fuckery. There was a long post about the group that was writing this mod, it wasn’t done in good faith.

    • BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social
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      11 months ago

      This is not the Baldur’s Gat devs dashing into the mod maker’s house and holding him at gunpoint until he deletes the mod. I’d agree, that would be inappropriate.

      What this is instead is the people running Nexus deciding that they don’t want to be associated with this kind of content and that they are not willing to host it. If you owned a bar and it started being frequented by neo-Nazis, you’d be perfectly within your rights to kick them out, because you’re a private business owner and can conduct it however you like within the bounds of the law.

      Your position isn’t the “live and let live” idea you think it is, because what you’re in effect claiming is that the people behind Nexus should be forced to host content that they find extremely morally objectionable.

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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      11 months ago

      I 100% agree with everything you days. I wouldn’t install this mod, but I also don’t think it should be removed, at least given what I know about it.

      • stopthatgirl7@kbin.social
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        11 months ago

        Nexus Mods specifically has rules against these kinds of mods. It was removed for violating them. They have the right to make whatever rules they went about the content they host.

        • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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          11 months ago

          I’m not saying it was against their rules, I’m saying their rules kinda suck if they led them to remove this.

          Imo, only mods that spread malware or hate (and maybe some other categories I’m missing) should be removed. This doesn’t do either. I think it’s a stupid mod and I’d never use it, but that doesn’t mean it should be stricken from the platform.

          But I agree, at the end of the day, they can remove whatever they want, I just think the rule sucks.

          • stopthatgirl7@kbin.social
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            11 months ago

            They said they want to create a “positive modding community,” and nothing about a mod like that is positive. No one is obliged to host hate.

            • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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              11 months ago

              And nothing about this seems negative or hateful. Do you think changing a character to be homosexual is somehow negative or hateful? What about just switching their gender? Race? At what point does it become negative or hateful?

              That said, I haven’t used this mod and I’m largely reacting to the headline here, so I could very well be missing something important. But if it’s just changing a character from LGBT to cis or whatever (or vice versa), I see no hate. AFAIK, nothing in it is saying being gay is bad or wrong.

          • ShaunaTheDead@kbin.social
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            11 months ago

            It does spread hate by erasing a queer character from a game. It spreads hate by shielding the exact people who should be exposed to queer people and learn to be empathetic towards their struggles from it.

  • mindbleach@sh.itjust.works
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    11 months ago

    Nexus consistently refuses to be a platform for bigotry.

    That should not be controversial, at all, in any context.

    If this asshat wants to publish it elsewhere - he’s free to. Nobody’s stopping him. It’s just a file. He has every moral right to modify software however he sees fit, and he has every practical right to be a homophobe online with fellow homophobes.

    But I don’t want anything to do with him. I don’t want to use any website that’s cool with bigots spreading bigotry. If the people who run the website don’t want to deal with that shit either… tough shit, guy. Find another bar. This one’s not for Nazis. Warn all your Nazi friends.

      • saze@feddit.uk
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        11 months ago

        So you’re saying everyone I disagree with is not in fact a Nazi? Interesting stuff but it sounds exactly like something a Nazi would say.

            • mindbleach@sh.itjust.works
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              11 months ago

              Says jackass pretending everyone’s just calling names, when the modder explicitly stated their bigoted intent. ‘Everyone’s such a meanie and calls names, waaah!’ No: we’re specifically talking about Nazis who proudly say ‘why yes we are Nazis, thank you for asking.’

              But your kind doesn’t care what words mean, so you’re just gonna performatively roll your eyes some more.

  • Infiltrated_ad8271@kbin.social
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    11 months ago

    There is nothing criminal in creating, using and sharing those mods (as hateful as they are), the modder could have simply said he did it because he felt like it, but the mediaval theming justification is really stupid and inflammatory.

    The community reaction is very counterproductive, they have only succeeded in making the mod very visible now. And nexusmods as usual accepting all kinds of horrible mods but censoring only according to drama. All badly here.

    • Mikina@programming.dev
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      11 months ago

      It’s just a PR stunt by Nexus mods. And I really hate companies doing PR stunts like these, because you can be sure that they are insincere and most of the time only exploit the diversity and inclusivity as a part of their marketing campaign. It’s just like companies waving rainbow flags on their logo for Pride, while donating millions of dollars to anit-gay politicans. .