IGN takes issue with white male lead in Days Gone.

[Heavenly_King]

Otter said:

Metroid33slayer said:
Replace the word white with any other race and male with female and this bigot gets fired and never works in the industry again. It's a sickening double standard.

In this actual sentence replace the word white with any other race and simply wouldn't sense because there is not an abundance of non white  "gruff" protagonists in AAA games.

It'd be like a writer saying yet another Mascot lead 3D platformer, a sentence that may have made sense in 2000 but not today where mascots & 3D platformers are rare compared other kinds of characters and genres.

You are defending the indefensible, the color of the skin should not matter; and as such it should not be involved as an argument.  It is quite simple.

The author whether he wanted or not, was being racist.