EDIT: UPDATE
| Leadified said: Half baked journalism by Polygon. The mod wasn't removed because of it's content, the mod was removed because the author was promoting a political agenda and also hosting a link to an extremist Youtube channel which violates Paradox's TOS. https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/4ktt2l/paradox_pulls_discriminatory_stellaris_mod_that/d3ht2c6 |
Makes more sense to me now, rather than removing a modification that actually contained no content.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paradox Interactive, developer and publisher of the successful new grand strategy title Stellaris, has taken decisive action to remove a user-created mod from Steam. The mod, titled "European Phenotype and Names Only (White Humans)" removed every instance of a non-European name or a non-Caucasian character portrait from the game's representation of the human race.
Reached for comment while the mod was still live on Steam, Paradox gave Polygon the following statement.
"We shipped the game originally with an accurate representation of humans, that is to say diverse in both ethnicity and personality. We embrace the idea that players mod the game to best represent how they want to play, we do NOT however wish to enable discriminatory practices. We appreciate any inappropriate mods being brought to our attention and will take them down where necessary, we also encourage players to make use of the flagging function provided by Valve where needed."
Eurogamer reports that a second mod, titled "Separate Human Phenotypes" is also under review.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
While I can certainly understand how offensive a mod like this could be to people, and don't see the appeal or point in the mod is it really right for Paradox to remove it
Should creating a mod that removes diversity really warrant deletion? As long as the mod description and contents is not overtly racist, offensive or biggoted I do not believe it should have been removed. It seems very likely the mod was created by someone with a racist view but deleting a mod like this from steam doesn't sit right with me.
If it was a mod that removed all white characters from the game would it have been deleted also? If the author created both an All White and an All Black mod would they have both been deleted?
I don't believe the content of the modification was an issue, as it was rather just removing content that was previously in the game, I understand Paradox wanting to get rid of something like this and that it is strongly implied racism but still the modification provided didn't contain any racist material, rather the mod contained nothing....
I understand why they did it, I don't approve of the mod, but deleting it makes me feel uneasy.
Do you think Paradox did the right thing or should modifications such as this not be so readily censored?
