Zombie Orpheus Entertainment, the production company behind web series JourneyQuest and indie movie series The Gamers, announced today that they will be removing their content from GOG.com, a subsidiary of CD Projekt (which is also the parent company of CD Projekt RED). This removal is in response to an offensive tweet from the GOG.com Twitter account that was sent out yesterday and has since been taken down.
The hashtag used "#WontBeErased" is a response to a recently leaked memo by the US President which expresses the intent to curb the rights and freedoms of the transgender population. #WontBeErased is a rallying cry that has been taken up by the transgender community and their allies, many of whom GOG angered with the tweet.
"The harm that hate speech does to people who are under immense threat from governments, private individuals, and corporations is incalculable," Ben Dobyns, CEO of Zombie Orpheus said. "It is downright sociopathic to demean our friends and allies in this way. There is absolutely nothing funny about it."
The Zombie Orpheus Twitter shows a screenshot of Dobyns email to the GOG.com team on the matter, and also mentions that this is the third such tweet that has been sent out in the past few months. A tweet in July included a picture of a person peeing on a grave labeled “Games Journalism,” and the date of death on the grave as the start of the GamerGate movement. This tweet was sent out to promote the release of the game Postal 2, which included that image in its Paradise Lost DLC. Website VG247 announced it would no longer be covering or supporting GOG news in response to this.
The second tweet was sent out in September was from the Twitter account for Cyberpunk 2077, a game developed by CD Projekt Red. In response to a fan tweet about the game at E3, the developers tweeted back “Did you just assume their gender?!” This phrase is commonly used on the internet to mock and attack transgender communities and their allies. After that tweet was deleted, the Cyberpunk 2077 account then tweeted out “Sorry to all those offended by one of the responses sent out from our account earlier. Harming anyone was never our intention.”
After taking down their most recent tweet, Gog issued the following statement on their Twitter account "Yesterday, we posted a tweet containing a trending hashtag as a pun. The tweet was neither intended as a malicious attack, nor as a comment to the ongoing social debate. GOG should focus only on games. We acknowledge that and we commit to it."
As part of Zombie Orpheus’ Twitter statement, they have offered to provide free replacement copies to anyone who owned any of their films on GOG.
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