Popular modding site Nexus Mods has banned the user who removed the Pride flags in the PC version of Marvel’s Spider-Man, sparking an outcry that the site has actively disengaged from.
The original mod was called “Non-Newtonian New York,” and replaced the in-game Pride flags dotted around New York City with US flags.
As today’s announcement from Nexus Mods explains, “In regards to the replacement of Pride flags in this game, or any game, our policy is thus: we are for inclusivity, we are for diversity. If we think someone is uploading a mod on our site with the intent to deliberately be against inclusivity and/or diversity then we will take action against it.”
It absolutely is, but a good one. Putting up any flag is actually counted as a very explicit political statement, also “nonpolitical” shit is liberal idea meaning “acceptance of status quo” - which is a political statement too.
A flag is only a political statement when it’s attempting to influence a decision to be made for or by a political party. There is no pride government/country/etc. It is only considered a political statement because most countries have decided to legislate against queer individuals and often the flag is flown to show support for queers. However it’s presence is not necessarily a political statement. The same could be said of country flags - it can be used to communicate where you are from, your background, your history, or any other number of non-political statements. It often, however, is flown as an act of endorsement or support which makes it a political statement.
Pride’s goal from the beginning has been liberatory politics and it’s important not to downplay that to make it more palatable. It’s political to fight to assert our right to have rights. Hell, the very concept of queerness is extremely political: it’s a political coalition of very different groups who work together because we share common political goals because we all suffer from the same oppressive norms and policies.
Where we should disagree with someone saying to keep politics outta their vidya gaemz is to say that doing so is both impossible and undesirable. AAA games are already so fucking afraid of saying anything at all, imagine how dry they’d be if they listened to the “no politics” crowd even more.
great points!
No, a flag is signalling you are supporting something or identifying with something. That is a political statement. For example supporting LGBT is a political statement in every country, just more safe in some, like in France nobody would probably mind, in Poland you will get sometimes yelled at and maybe vandalised and in Saudi Arabia it’s probably illegal.
All of those are political statements, even if very minor and moslty inconsequential (“identifying with something”). But depending on circumstances the outcome might change. Imagine you’re a Russian living in the West and you just want to “communicate where you are from” and fly a russian flag - people were losing jobs and got a death threats for that.
I think that’s too liberal of an interpretation of the definition of political statement - at that point doing pretty much anything is a political statement, which calls into question what the point of calling something a political statement even is.
Yes because everything in society is firmly placed in politics. Some acts and stances of course are too minor and inconsequential to have an any impact or even be noticed. A lot is commonly thought apolitical because of it or beacuse people don’t think it’s politcs based on whatever - often based on liberal propaganda which is pushing the postpolitics very hard. Because, again, postpolitics is just the acceptance of status quo.