Disclaimer: I am not personally invested in the whole thing. I am not cool and remote like a mountain but I don’t care that much about GOG.
As I understand, GOG sent out a newsletter promoting a game with Nazi symbols.
The game’s developers released a statement in a reddit comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/gog/comments/1txlz7z/hey_gog_wtaf/opxpgf0/
Afterwards GOG made two statements:
- https://old.reddit.com/r/gog/comments/1txmcyd/ts_gotta_be_racist_gog_explain/opxtour/
- https://www.gog.com/forum/general/weird_subject_line_choice_for_a_newsletter/post60
I don’t expect folks to read through the whole thing but some surface level thoughts would be appreciated. Like they make a lot of emotionally charged statements citing culture and I can’t tell if they are genuine or hot air.
anybody talking about “ancient slavic runes” or promoting any kind of runiform “ancient slavic symbols” should be considered either clueless and unserious at best or a fascist at worst. There is little to no evidence for any kind of pre-christian slavic writing, especially rune-type.
pseudoscientific theories professing otherwise are usually connected to ideas like the “nordic-arian” myth, “hyperborea,” and other esoteric nazi nonsense, developed in part by far-right white émigrés and, in part, by literal card-carrying members of the german nazi party.
tragically, since the illegal dissolution of the ussr, the cia and other western intelligence agencies have been successfully pushing this idea, as well as other intellectual diarrhoea, into our public (sub-)consciousness, as well as even into some of our educational institutions, leading to some uninformed and clueless young people adopting those ideas as supposed fact, even if they haven’t willfully embraced reactionary ideology.
to answer your question, though, those game developers clearly know what they’re doing: they are nazis and just too cowardly to admit it openly!