The email in the comments
This is the top of the email:
This is the typeset of the game they’re promoting:
This looks like a monumentally stupid fuckup. Never attribute to malice that what can be easily attributed to stupidity, incompetence, or negligence.
They knew the sig “runes” were problematic before sending out the email, as they said they removed them for their German customers, but then kept it for everyone else. They knew, but decided to keep of in anyway.
ffs, why must everything good turn out to be shit. well, gog hasnt been THAT good, but it has been nice extra thing. knowing companies cant do anything without having at least 6 meetings about it, there is no way this went unnoticed by people there, so i rule out rogue actor doing this.
I’m sorry, not with the fucking double sig rune. You can’t be that brain dead to not see and know it is the symbol of the fucking SS and then even try to dance around German laws against the usage of NS-symbols and even fuck that up.
I do kind of like the fact that it’s in Unicode though. So things like this are actually possible. Sort of weird decision really.
They have lots of controversial symbols. The male pregnancy emoji pales in comparison to an actual swastika. Clockwise, counterclockwise, with dots and without.
People defending this as “those are lighning bolts, not everyone knows it’s nazi imagery” are american, right?
Like, everyone in Europe knows this is strictly and unmistakably nazi imagery, especially in Poland. There is no wiggle room for not knowing; that’s not even an excuse GOG themselves are trying to make, because if they tried to use that excuse then literally no one with the ability to read it in Europe would be uneducated enough to fall for it.
People defending this as “those are lighning bolts, not everyone knows it’s nazi imagery” are american, right?
Nah, they know what they are. They’re trying to a) downplay the symbol’s significance and normalize displaying it and b) get a “snowflake got triggered by lightning bolts” own out of it.
I’m sure there are some fash doing this, but a lot of comments here seem extremely naive and forgiving. And they come from lib instances, which I have grievances with, just not regarding dogwhistling & normalizing fascism (unless it comes out of UA…)
Racists wil Fuck around and then plead ignorance to avoid Finding Out.
It was used in Poland as a symbol of feminism when women protested against criminalization of abortion.
This is why it became nazi imagery, declared and sanctioned by polish right-wing government because they needed an excuse to stop the movement.
You from america, friend?
European.
And you should tell those guys they stole their symbol from 21st century feminists:
I’m gonna need some proof of this. I wonder why a German, designing a sign for the German members of the SS in 1929 (10 years before Germany invaded Poland), would choose a sign with the purpose of harming a Polish feminist/pro-abortion movement.
It makes no sense and I can’t find any sources saying anything like that at all.
So cough up some sources. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
https://natemat.pl/324721,symbol-czerwonej-blyskawicy-co-oznacza-czerwony-piorun-na-strajku-kobiet
Article is in Polish, but I thing google translate or DeepL should work for you to get the gist. They picked this symbol as “lightning”
One lightning bolt by itself is a very different meaning to 2 right next to each other.
Especially so when next to a Black Sun
Double lightning bolt is unmistakably a nazi symbol.
The black sun alone is a Nazi symbol. Invented by Heinrich Himmler himself and used as decoration for their SS Ordensburg.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sun_(symbol)?wprov=sfti1#Wewelsburg_mosaic_and_the_Nazi_periodYeah, but also the red lightning bolt sign of the polish pro-abortion movement was introduced in 2016. The SS sign with the sigrune was introduced in 1929.
If nazis had time travel, how did they manage to screw their war effort up so badly? They must have been even worse tacticians than we thought!
On that I cannot disagree. All I wanted to defend was a singular lightning bolt.
Yeah, that article is about how the media deliberately misinterpreted the symbol as being nazi-like after the feminist movement picked it after the war and after the Nazis used their famous double lightning insignia.
This sort of contradicts your first comment … If I’m being kind I think you were just being inarticulate.
Dude, you got the timeline completely wrong: https://www.obieg.pl/en/210-the-red-lightning-of-all-poland-women-s-strike-forwards-and-backwards
The red lightning sign as part of the polish pro-abortion movement came into existence in 2016! A whopping 87 years AFTER the Nazis created the SS sign.
If the Nazis made the sign to discredit poland’s pro-abortion movement, they would have needed time travel to do so.
WTF I just learned about this.
Idk about the polish feminist movement, but, respectfully, what the fuck are you on about
(Polish feminist lightning bolt I could find with 5s of research, they seem to do a pretty good job at differentiating their logo by having a single bolt with a different shape that is red and black instead of black and white. Red and black are usually associated with anti fascism btw)
What are you on about? Red and black anti fascism? Like, I dunno, people who wore those uniforms?
Yes, I am talking about this symbol. And while on the image you picked it clearly looks more like lightning, the narrower version was used too. And the idea that “SS” and “S” is the very same thing is just bonkers. All the alphabet would be symbols of hate by now.
Yes ?
Oh god.
So swastika (a hindu symbol) got taken by nazis and now nazi colours are taken by anti-nazis.
And everyone still thinks they know definitely what specific symbol/colour/letter symbolizes?
I’m giving up. I’m never correcting anyone on nazis ever again. If someone tells me that rainbow was used by hitler-lovers, I will just accept it as possible.
Just shut up, please. Your stupidity and lack of even basic knowledge is exhausting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_FrontThey’re just sealioning, because they think it makes them look smart. Nazis are all morons, so they naturally gravitate towards stupid actions.
OMG even black straight arrow is a nazi symbol?
these symbols seem to render very differently on different devices. i got a wheel of hatchets, an eight-pointed star, and two futhark runes on desktop.
…which is why it’s at the very least irresponsible for them to send something like this. if there is actually intent here that only makes it worse.
Their “apology” actually admitted that they knew about the potential for rendering differences. They say they knew that certain symbols could render as Nazi icons, which is why they specifically excluded those symbols from the email they sent to German accounts.
But if we extend that same “we didn’t send it to Germany” thing to the logical conclusion, it means they intentionally sent it to everyone else even when knowing the potential for issues.
I made a complaint last year about one of their emails having a giant banner saying “MAKE GAMING GREAT AGAIN!” they made mildly appropriate noises. Seemed like the person on the other end really just wanted me to fuck entirely off asap.
they specifically excluded those symbols from the email they sent to German accounts
And even that they fucked up, because it seems like they just removed them from the German language version of the email. German accounts set to English (like mine) got the symbols like everyone else.
This is a protocol, you can’t memorize the reason behind every protocol you can only incorporate it into routine otherwise you would have to memorize a set of encyclopedias that shifts like aand on a desert.
What do you mean by protocol? I mean I understand your analogy, but not what protocol is an analogy for.
not OP, but i hear people using “playbook” in similar situations (if I’m understanding stupidcasey right)
Thanks, but I still don’t get it
protocol isn’t an analogy. it’s jargon.
if you’re doing the “i’m pretending to be stupid” thing, referring to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion or whatever that bullshit was called, we don’t have to cede all of language to nazis just because they speak.
My favorite part was that GoG was told they cannot send this email in Germany because it would break the Nazi rule so they purposely get blocked their emails to getting to Germany.
In other words, they knew.
They adapted the runes für the German newsletter. Aside from that you are correct: they knew what they were doing.
Developers: you can’t use unused Unicode to represent photos, such a simple string of Data could be interpreted an infinite different ways If there isn’t unity.
Marketing team: bah humbug, what’s the worst thing that could happen…
Sure there’s intent. Obviously!
Do you happen to have your GOG account in Germany or in German language?
no, because then i apparently wouldn’t have gotten the email at all!
Living in Germany woth German account but somehow English newsletters I also got the email.
You forgot to hide your name.
The screenshot is from the PCGamer article
MFW
I don’t have the email but I would assume those emojis in this case are Slavic neopaganist symbols, also known as rodnovery.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Rodnover_symbols
Yes, but. Big but.
The devs of the games included in that email signed off on it before it went out. The version the devs were shown had no “runes” included.
GOG has acknowledged that those runes can display on some devices distinctly as the symbol for the SS, so they did not send this email to subscribers subscribed in the German language. Instead of just using a different fucking symbol, or not using it twice in a row.
As far as I understand it, those are pretty random runes, not specifically Slavic at all.
Taken as a whole, it shows that they had some idea of how this would appear, and they went through with it anyway, for no obvious benefit.
Not a good look.
Yeah thinking about it using the lightning rune twice is really sus. Very hard to defend that.
Viewing this runes as they are, it comes to my mind the Black Sun symbol as 1st thought.
Edit: shit the game is called End of the Sun.
The devs covered that, they were not aware of any dogwhistles with the symbols they used during development, and once they were made aware of said dogwhistles, they spent the time to remove them from the game as thoroughly as possible
So GOG has a Nazi employee or it uses AI for newsletters.
As far as I understand it, those are pretty random runes, not specifically Slavic at all.
Not like specifically Slavic runes exist anyway.
It’s so crazy that the dev team even went into damage control to point out that it was not them.
That Slavic team probably feeling like crap today because of something GoG did.
Notice there is no double sig in there. Also note that Rodnovery is a neopagan religion, associated with nationalism. It’s the Slavic equivalent the Norse pantheon fetishism you see in the West in the form of Odinism.
You should assume they’re Nazi symbols because they are, even if Nazis stole a lot of symbols from everyone else. The sig was first adapted into the double sig in 1929 to be used as the Schutzstaffel logo
“those emojis”
They’re not emojis, at all. Emojis are pictures with a very specific and limited set. They’re ascii characters.
You calling them emojis is “grandma calling your Xbox a “Nintendo Station”” level dumb.Those aren’t standard ASCII characters. They are Unicode. They are closer to emojis than anything else.
Before you try to lecture anyone you might want to spend more than 10 seconds on wikipedia next time.
There’s a multitude of ways to correct someone without coming off as a pedantic prick in the process
It does make it less funny when someone tries to politely correct and is wrong vs belligerently doing so with inaccurate information though.
You really didn’t have to add dumb at the end there. We all make mistakes, and emoji can also be interpreted and implemented in pretty different ways
Thats it?
Gaben, “we aren’t a monopoly there’s plenty of other publishers to buy from”
GOG
Steam once again using the winning strategy of doing nothing while your opponent fucks up
interesting how easily is for a company to not shoot itself in the foot if they don’t have public shareholders
Gog is privately owned now though?
Yep, and that’s why it’s also a good platform resistant to enshitification.
the stock market is a cancer on the economy.
Where’s the game store footgun meme?
Crap, there’s a quote about doing that, I just can’t remember whether it was Technoblade, Sun Tzu or Emperor Rosselle who said it…
You mean the Napoleon Bonaparte one?
Never interrupt your enemy when he’s about to make a mistake
Ah, should’ve known it was some frenchie. Though, I’m pretty sure it was Emperor Rosselle in that case
“Found my grandpa’s helmet. He must’ve been an electrician or something.”
People can shit on Valve all they want, but at least they never went full Nazi.
I see what you mean
had they used 1 or 3 of the symbol instead, I don’t think we’d have this problem
People really tearing GoG to shreds here but I don’t really understand why. I’m not a GoG user/stan so I don’t have a dog in this race, but this doesn’t (to me) seem to follow any pattern of malicious behavior.
- To my knowledge they haven’t had recurring big controversies of this kind that show systemic cultural issues. Their Wikipedia page has a “Controversies” section with 3 events, including this one, for a total of 9 sentences.
- Even if it was sent maliciously and intentionally, if they apologize and it doesn’t happen again I’m not going to get bent out of shape. These email campaigns are run by peons low on the totem pole and hardly get any thorough review.
- The SS symbol is relatively niche and bland (though I concede this differs by country). To my knowledge it’s not the most common dogwhistle or exceedingly controversial. I’ve often seen people gaff into it when trying to punch up text with lighting bolts ⚡. It’s not exactly on the same tier as the death’s head => concentration camp connection.
- Building on the above and knowing that GoG uses ai, its plausible that it could be accidental
- An intern gets some copy, runs the header through Ai like he usually does because emojis in headers perform way better.
- The LLM looking for “runes” has a strong bias for pairs of the symbol; probably nobody writes Elder Futhark runes, and especially that one, outside of the SS context.
- Even if the intern knows the symbol, not all systems render it in an obvious way.
- The email service automatically filters it from German emails due to stricter laws on Nazi symbols.
I’m not saying people can’t choose to believe it was malicious or that it’s impossible for GoG to have a rotten company culture. But I’m confused at the level of vitriol. You’d think we were talking about tobacco or oil companies with an established history of killing puppies.
They ran the ss symbol - except for the campaign in Germany where nazi symbolism is illegal - so they knew what it was and ran it anyway
People responded to this going “hey dude wtf” and the official response has been…not smart
And now it is blowing up
The SS symbol is not a dogwhistle. Dogwhistles are meant to be covert and unassuming to anyone except those within the neofascist subculture, like 1488 and triple parenthesis.
Unlike those dogwhistles, meant only to be understood by an ingroup, the SS lighning bolts are as explicit as a swastika. I would go even as far as to say that they are more egregious than a swastika, as swastikas have cultural signification in some countries that might muddy the waters when interpreting the symbol alone. The SS bolts have no such excuse.
Also it wasn’t an automatic filter on german emails, it was a filter on german speakers. German emails configured with english as their language did receive the email, according to comments here.
There is no benefit of the doubt to be allowed here. If they don’t have an extremely solid explanation (and LLMs aren’t that, they know how to recognize actual dogwhistles, they wouldn’t output actual 1940s nazis imagery so famous & standard, unless instructed to), then either someone needs to be fired, or we as the public need to understand that there is complacency for actual nazism within this company.
Again, this isn’t some little dogwhistle people might be confused about. This is standard 1940s nazi imagery, on the same level of significance as the swastika. I knew this as a child in the 2000s, as a kid who never paid attention in class and found history to be the most boring topic.
One of the main issues with all that is that there was a review, and they didn’t sent it to Germany because of that review. So no, it was known, it is not a niche dog whistle, and I for one am not blaming the intern (if any) who did it, but rather the moderator who allowed the letter to go
Yeah the final responsibility is entirely on whoever owns the email campaign/process. Having read their response to the community, it was more tone deaf and confusing than just delaying a statement or making a more focused one.
At the end of the day they did stop the email mid send-out and are allegedly doing a review, which is the most you could ask of the higher ups. I’ve been through similar fires (though not Nazi or PR related) at some companies, figuring out exactly who said what and when can be very tricky. They probably don’t yet know how strong the feedback was, when it was given or who might be lying to save their job.
Immediately putting out specifics like “we didn’t port the feedback” is a terrible idea. The public has even less context, not knowing how siloed the review process is or if logistics played a factor (German review came last, reviewer was in a different timezone, etc…).
Whole process has been bungled all around.
I much prefer the gog approach as a video game platform in a huge way. I would like to see this approach of selling games win.
But they fucked up so massively here… Accidental or not, the iconography of the twin lightning bolts in an international context is so clear.
They need to make their apology so loud and so clear, that any little nazlets thinking this is a sign from someone on gog staff, instead realize that there is no safe space for their hatred there.
You cannot be ambivalent to maybe being associated with Nazis in the minds of some people. That’s how you get Nazis.
Even if it was sent maliciously and intentionally, if they apologize and it doesn’t happen again I’m not going to get bent out of shape. These email campaigns are run by peons low on the totem pole and hardly get any thorough review.
It is not run by peons. Email marketing is a major source of revenue for companies. It’s one of the main pillars of communication that’s directly to actual engaged customers.
At my job, the ad copywriters, the PR team and the email marketers control all messaging of the brand. Everyone else (the website content team, the social media team, etc) goes to them for validation and content checks. It’s a big deal.
I don’t think it was malicious but it’s still a big gaffe, especially coming from Poland, of all countries.
I don’t get all this noise too, being nazi is finally cool again! Those woke lefties want to break all good things again…
I think it was just someone using that symbol thinking it was an innocuous Nazi reference, not understanding that it holds nearly as much significance as the Swastika itself to some people.
PR Firms and marketing departments aren’t especially bright, so they need to understand that there has been a tightening of perception on that front, and ANY Nazi imagery is considered inappropriate for marketing purposes.
The transphobic company is also a nazi company.
I am shocked, shocked I say.
transohobic company
Yo imma need some blue text about that
100 % ai. Llms love emojis in subject lines
The strange thing is that they did notice It and elected to not send it in German instead of just not putting the symbols in the subject.
Iirc Germany has laws against it, so they probably wanted to avoid legal issues.
Which means they knew what it looked like and what they were sending.
They are not emoji 😓
How is this one of several comments here calling them emojis? How are you all somehow here on Lemmy while seemingly having grandma level tech illiteracy?
They’re not emojis, they’re ascii characters. Emojis are emojis, a very limited set of pictures. These are not that.They’re not ASCII characters you dipshit. Learn how to use a computer before going around lecturing others.
is extremely pretentious and pedantic
somehow doesn’t know about unicode despite being compelled to technically “acshually” people
okay bud you need to calm down a little before posting stuff
Lol I love how you got your shit rocked after being so condescending
deleted by creator
Nah it’s the new email marketing meta. So many emojis and ASCII symbols. It’s the new play to try to stand out from all of the existing ad industry noise in people’s email inboxes
All of which have emojis now…
Epic use of Epic Rap Battles clip
The “GOG Bad Now” people in this thread are out of their minds.
This was overwhelmingly obviously some combination of poor decision and mistake with no malicious intent behind it.
Yes, it was a fuck up. Yes, they should apologize. No, this should not be a brand-ruining event for GOG.
If there was any history in their past for them to suggest they were facists or nazi sympathizers, this might be a different story.
Their response admitted that they did not send the same email to their German customers as they knew if would be offensive.
So why send it to everyone else in the world who is also offended by nazis? And why send those two runes side by side? There’s only one meaning in that choice. Both decisions show intent, not a little mistake.
Saying it was a mistake or a poor decision ignored the several points where people could have (should have) stopped the email from going out.
Good Old
GamesGoebbelsThis is really the whole incident is more than the sum of it’s parts stuff, but in a negative way.
Context?
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