You are [not] a toy
[Update 2: The dev team has published another statement, this time via Steam. “We feel very sad about the situation we have been in the last few days. The truth is we have never supported and will not support LGBT and we feel bad for those people even if they feel happy about themselves. But the actions of our ex-coworkers are unacceptable,” a representative from Dream Games said.
“We are game developers and we don’t make games for certain society, we make it for everyone. Regardless of there personality everyone has the right to buy and play our game.”
How magnanimous.]
[Update 1: Dream Games has issued an apology via Operation Caucasus’ Facebook page. “At Dream Games we feel very sorry about current situation. We have fired both editor and managing director from team. We will make sure situations like this will never happen in the future.”
However, even if this mea culpa inspires people to give the game a fair shot, you couldn’t buy it even if you wanted — at time of writing, its Steam pagelacks an “add to cart” button.]
Ever since Valve turned its Early Access program into a Hunger Games-esque battle royale for survival, indie developers without access to press or signal-boosting tools like the Indie Megabooth have resorted to good old fashioned bribery. They’ll offer keys in exchange for (often positive) user reviews, Facebook likes, Twitter follows — just about any kind of grassroots support they can manage, all in the hopes of drumming up interest.
In the case of Dream Games, the developer of critically reviledfirst-person-shooter Operation Caucasus, that method of fan engagement backfired horribly when it offered free Steam keysto users in exchange for a simple Facebook message. Nivea (last name unavailable) was one such user. The problem? Nivea was sporting the LGBT rainbow filter on her profile picture, and Dream Games didn’t like that very much. The company responded to her request with: “We’re not support LGBT. Please, just f**k you.”
Nivea took toOperation Caucasus‘ Steam reviews page to voice her displeasure. “By asking, I received a negative, saying they do not support the LGBT cause (I use the rainbow colors in the profile picture) and ‘kindly’ asked me to go **** myself.” She posted the review in the hopes of “exposing [Dream Games’] homophobia,” and also managed to get in a few comments about the game itself. “Well, I really tried to play, open twice, but both times broke, in one of them needed to restart the PC, I could not even play.”
When I first saw the post, I wanted to run her screenshot through a Photoshop detector. I couldn’t believe somebody would make that kind of brazen faux pas in this day and age. Turns out it wasn’t a mistake at all, but a legitimately held belief on the part of the developer.
“We’re real human. We can’t change our believes. You’re christian? You can’t support ‘lgbt.’ You’re not following any religion? There is no reason for the support ‘lgbt’ for you. In America, your parents teach you wrong. This is not the true way. If you’ll understand it, you’ll be a real human. If you’ll not understand that, you’ll be just a ‘mutation’ version of human,” a Dream Games representative said. “We’ll never support ‘lgbt.’ We’re not a toy. This is our freewill.”
Coooooooool.
It seems like Dream Games doesn’t need to try very hard to get people to hate its game — at press time, reviews forOperation Caucasusare defined as “mixed” on the store page, but the recent “most helpful” reviews are fairly harsh. The positive reviews, in comparison, are slight and reek of impropriety. A demo was released as an ostensible full product on Steam before leaving and returning as an Early Access title, having only marginally improved since then.
We’ve reached out to Dream Games for comment on this situation and will update the story as necessary. (Before you ask, I’ve also inquired aboutthisreview, which seems too weird and like waytoo racist to be true.)
Jim Sterling [Twitter]