Well that’s a headline I never thought I’ll write. Several posts and comments on the GOG subreddit have noticed a promotional e-mail that contains some… interesting symbols, which I can confirm with my own e-mail. As can be seen from the screenshot below, an e-mail containing a discount code for the game The End of the Sun (nothing out of the ordinary so far) contains 4 symbols that resemble Nazi iconography.
Was willing to buy the “oopsie daisy! The symbols displayed incorrectly” defence, but admitting that they KNEW the issue existed, put two of them side by side, and then doubled down by basically saying “one bad egg shouldn’t spoil a perfectly good rune”, then not sending the offending email to German customers is baffling!
Time to demand a few refunds I think. Can’t support any justification for promoting fascism.
The “not sending to German customers” is the cincher to me.
Wow… I really don’t buy those excuses…
They literally admit to seeing the problem before distribution, but instead of just deleting them from the email, they decide to just not include the place where it would get them into the most legal trouble instead?
Uh… No… That’s not an accident anymore. There’s no oopsie there.
Then they go and double down on reddit by giving the excuse that the symbol has been around way longer than it’s modern historical use, so we shouldn’t stop using it because someone corrupted it?
No, that’s not how it works.
Things get ruined and they take on new meanings, that includes words and symbols. You don’t just get to decide that you’re going to take back the symbol of some of the worst evil mankind has known just because it had another meaning before that and then expect everyone to be like, “Oh, alright…” It has a new meaning now. One that everyone recognizes… A meaning that it is blatantly apparent they were aware of beforehand and decided to use anyway.
Anyone buying that bullshit excuse is an idiot.
Fuck GoG.
Some people still keep the old meaninga going.
The west hates the Swastika for obvious reasons, but whenever I go to an Indian store there are swastika brand products because it still has its old meaning to Indians.
First time I went to an Indian coworkers house I stopped dead in my tracks when I approached their door, it was a Hindu special time and they had a giant swatika on the door.
I also recognize that placing two such runes next to each other could create an unfortunate association with symbols used by the Nazi regime. This was noticed before distribution, and out of respect for local sensitivities, the material was not sent to the German community.
Zero explanation for why there were two of them, and the thing about Germany makes them look worse.
But it’s not the same symbol despite being two of them.
Let’s not nazis hijack the letter S and fucking sun now shall we? This is so tiring.
And they decided to remove them specifically for Germany because…?
So they knew it was there and decided not to send it to the market where it would be possibly illegal. This is pretty brazen and I cannot imagine what they are thinking would come from this that would make the reputational impact worthwhile.
“You don’t understand, they call us Nazi so we have to do this to prove them wrong!! Why are you doing this to us!!!”
The fact the game has changed logo and gog decided they’d include the old one stinks.
This makes the runes in the gog mail feel like a reaction to the devs “going back” on their original iconography and an attempt at fixing it.
“Oh, you changed your symbol because it was too nazi-like? Let us double down on it.”
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They didn’t use the The Schutzstaffel Nazi symbol in the German mailers because they thought it would violate hate speech laws.
There was no reason to use 2 of those runes together.
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Sadly, that’s the point of dog whistling, to have some doubt to whether it was actually innocent.
With how prevalent dog whistles are in neo-Nazism, it’s not surprising that people are sceptical. It’s a whole thing to send “subtle” Nazi symbology and then deny everything when called out.
where are all the people that were attacking valve yesterday? c’mon guys! GOG is the best, right??
But on GOG, you actually own your games! Well, you don’t, but you can download the files and run the game without the launcher! Well, you also can on Steam and EGS, but… uhhh… whatever, Valve is a monopoly, this is why you should buy from GOG and not any other major competitor to the monopoly like EGS, Ubisoft Connect, BattleNet, itch, Xbox Store, Amazon…
GOG is a meme service, and its fanboys are even more annoying than Valve’s simply because their platform of choice is objectively worse. At least no one defends EGS or Ubisoft Connect.
First of all I love GOG, I love their mission, and I have stood by them since the beginning.
That being said, why the living fuck did they put 2 of the last symbol? What did that represent!?
The two together at the end is the ss lightning bolt. Hitlers gestapo.
Yeah, I get that. But my point is, if they say it’s not supposed to have been that, when that’s what everyone else sees, what were they trying to represent? Like, ok, Nordic runes are touchy because of the nazis, but there are plenty of reasons to use them. But using that rune twice? Why? Why only that rune? How can you say you didn’t mean that? What else could you have been trying to represent?
A nitpick but the Gestapo were just a part of the SS.
The two main constituent groups were the Allgemeine SS (General SS) and Waffen-SS (Armed SS). The Allgemeine SS was responsible for enforcing the racial policy of Nazi Germany and general policing, whereas the Waffen-SS consisted of the combat units of the SS, with a sworn allegiance to Hitler. A third component of the SS, the SS-Totenkopfverbände (SS-TV; “Death’s Head Units”[2]), ran the concentration camps and extermination camps. Additional subdivisions of the SS included the Gestapo and the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) organisations. They were tasked with detecting actual or potential enemies of Nazi Germany, neutralizing the opposition, policing the German people for their commitment to Nazi ideology and providing domestic and foreign intelligence.
Did you also stand by them when they started using AI images in the store? Or when they started that patrons thing where they just ask you to donate to a for-profit store?
GOG has been kind of weird lately, and I can’t say I like what I’ve been seeing.
to me it’s pretty clear that it was intentional. like ffs, they explicitly chose to send the email with that title everywhere except germany because it’s illegal to have nazi symbolism there. so obviously they knew! they realized what this came across as!
idk if it’s an edgy representative, and now they’re defending that rep or something (or maybe the rep is the one writing the shitty non-apologies)… but yea, i’m downloading all my offline installers and if they don’t have a real apology and commitment to not fucking do this again then my account is gone.
fuck gog. the ai shit was bad enough, this is fucking unacceptable. i’d rather put up with steam’s drm than give money to neonazis.
As an Easterner, I fully agree with that highlighted comment from Polish dude - the symbol you see in the title has nothing to do with Nazis, it is cultural heritage that we still use around.
For us it’s different, but idea is the same - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ugunskrusts
Better don’t go to India
Let me remind you that this is Polish game and GoG is owned by a Polish company.
EDIT: I… don’t honestly understand the downvotes. Do you like not believe me and Wikipedia?
EDIT2: I’m assuming people somehow assumed I’m talking about runes, when in reality I just wanted to elaborate on local cultural heritage (the sun-looking thing in the game’s logo, not emails)
It’s a rune and displays differently depending on where you are viewing it.
That author is one hell of a pearl clutcher.
It’s double runes of a different unicode character, they recognised the whole thing would appear to be Nazi and they deliberately did not send it to Germany where it is illegal.
The reddit post does a good job of people calling this out: https://www.reddit.com/r/gog/comments/1txlz7z/hey_gog_wtaf/
reddit
opinion discarded
Dont worry, when we let Nazis take symbols they’ll eventually accumulate them all and we’ll have none left to use.I think we should take them back—just like with 👌Educate thyself below --v
So nobody here wants to actually read the article where it was very clearly explained that this was a rendering error of a different symbol on some devices?
Y’all just really, really wanna be mad, huh?
The Schutzstaffel is purely a Nazi symbol.
There was no reason to use 2 of those runes together, especially when not using it in German mailers because they thought it would violate hate speech laws.
Either you are trying to gaslight people into thinking that ᛋᛋ is not a symbol of hate and genocide, or you are extremely ignorant.
Did you read the article? It’s not Schutzstaffel.
Tell me then, why would they use 2 side by side. And why not show those symbols to Germans?
This seems like just poor planning rather than signaling. Let be real here. What is GOG or the devs to gain from this, it’s silly.
No, I’m just capable of reading an article and understanding an explanation, unlike you and most other people in the thread, apparently.
Tell me then, why would they not show those symbols to Germans?
We all did, we also read the other messages and saw through the flimsy excuse provided.
Please do tell us why putting two Greek Koppa together was necessary, and how it relates to Polish cultural history. Why they realised that it appeared Nazi related, and instead of simply not doing it decided to only not do it in Germany.
Y’ou just really, really wanna downplay this, huh?
Lol, no, I’m just here to laugh at everyone malding about what is very clearly an innocent mistake.
Seriously, this is Tankie Triad levels of conspiracism, y’all.
If it’s just a mistake, then why did they only remove the symbol in the email sent to German customers, where it could get them into legal trouble?
Funny hill to die on
As long as the nazi’s dead
Funny hill to make a mountain out of
They didn’t even use the rune though. They didn’t use the sowilo rune ᛋ but the koppa symbol ϟ because it looks more like the sig rune. If they actually meant to use the sowilo rune they would have and also why make a doppelrune? This is nazi shit.
THAT.
IS.
WHY.
I.
PIRATE!
You pirate because GOG made a fuck-up in its marketing comms?
Is this a case of AI ?
I got that email. Symbols verbatim
𖥞 ꥟ ϟϟ
Let’s look those up.
-
BAMUM LETTER PHASE-D MVOP
not a germanic rune
-
REJANG SECTION MARK
not a germanic rune
-
GREEK SMALL LETTER KOPPA
not a germanic rune
0/3 germanic/nazi runes. They resemble if you willfully go there.
verdict: reaction bait for reddit-grade pearl clutchers
Then why bother removing them for Germany
This explanation falls apart when it comes to the SS symbol.
Gog claims that they were using the sowilo rune, but as you found they were using the lower case koppa letter. The sowilo rune is included in unicode, there was no reason to use the greek letter koppa for it … unless they wanted to hint at something else. And the elephant in the room: why did they put 2 of the things next to eachother? Gog hasn’t found a suitable excuse for that so far.
It’s an obvious dog whistle and it’s rightfully being called out.
A straight line isn’t a Nazi symbol either, but if you put 8 of them together in to a pinwheel shape, well now we have a problem.
Context matters.
This has to be satire. You’re doing satire, right?
No, its bait.
just look at these two innocent numbers
- 14 a factor of 7 and 2
- 88 a factor of 11 and 23
Still think there is any malicious intent here??
-