This week, MechWarrior Online has restored the original team names for its trans-focused players after a backlash from the community.
The wow boycott was a response to the changes made by the developers of MechWarrior Online. After uproar over the name changes and suspensions, the developers have restored trans-focused team names.
We’ll just go ahead and provide a free advice to MMO moderation staff everywhere: banning individuals for showing sympathy for disadvantaged groups is almost never a good look. Piranha Games, for example, ordered two competitive MechWarrior Online teams called “Trans Rights” and “Trans Fights” to alter their names while suspending team captain Daalpacagirl for her “trans rights” battlecry at the start of matches.
Piranha Games reps told Daalpacagirl that her offense was classified as “Harassment/Defamation/Insults/Toxicity/Non-Constructive Behavior,” and that her “real-life political discussions” constituted “disruptive behavior” that was “negatively affecting the experience of other players” because the game was not “the appropriate environment for such discussions,” according to her tweets. She was eventually able to persuade Piranha to demand that she “delete [her] initial statement from the in-game chat,” with the opening phrase being “ALL-trans rights.” Her “misconduct” had persisted, according to the gamemaster, and she’d been banned from the game and the forums for 48 hours, with the possibility of a permanent ban if she continued beyond that.
“For very clear reasons, the term Trans and others are and have been prohibited in the EULA for a very very long time,” said Piranha President Russ Bullock in response to the following outrage on Reddit and Twitter. In reality, he claimed that the policy was the result of “bad trolls” and “bad apples.” But then, in a dev blog post yesterday, Piranha’s Live Operations Manager Matt Newman overturned the moderation choices, claiming that the removal of the Trans Fights and Trans Rights team names “was not the right option.”
“We should have asked more questions and gotten to the bottom of the real purpose of the name choice, as well as those who were experiencing problems with it. I apologize for our actions, which clearly wounded and angered many. We will improve. We will enable the team to utilize any of their original options as their team name, with the understanding that trans rights are not a political issue. In addition, all moderation measures performed in conjunction with this moderation will be reversed. Finally, there are emblems of tyranny and hatred throughout the game. Because of their dynamic positioning, images produced using the decal system have no moderating options. Please provide screenshots of these problems to customer service, and we will try our best to resolve them.”
“I’m glad they seem to have reversed their position,” Daalpacagirl wrote, “but the fact that it took some amount of (potential) public pressure to get such a response, combined with their (apparently quite long) history of not doing a whole lot to stop harassment, doxxing, and bigotry in the community do a great deal to temper my hopes & expectations going forward,” she wrote. “In the meanwhile, I’ll be content to return to playing MWO with my buddies, perhaps with a bit less stress this time.”
It’s worth mentioning that EG7, the same firm that controls Daybreak and SSG, bought Piranha Games last year.
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The is wow losing players 2021 is a topic of discussion that has been circulating the internet for quite some time. After an uproar over name changes and suspensions, MechWarrior Online has restored their trans-focused team names.
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