“The opportunity was here and we took it.”
February 27, 2019 7:35 AM   Subscribe

Video game publisher THQ Nordic has found itself in a marketing quagmire of epic proportions after announcing and holding an Ask Me Anything session on the infamous 8chan forum, known for their support of bigotry, white supremacy, and illegal activity. The backlash to the announcement was swift, with games critic Noah Gervais pointing out how utterly damaging the decision was.

Unsurprisingly, the company is now in full damage control mode, having issued an apology and trying to put distance between themselves and 8chan.
posted by NoxAeternum (37 comments total) 19 users marked this as a favorite
 
But what piece of Samsonite (luggage) thought this would be a feather in their cap?

The title is literally from one of the tweets announcing the AMA. When I read the story, my first thought was "who could be so utterly incompetent at their job?"
posted by NoxAeternum at 7:57 AM on February 27, 2019 [5 favorites]


This has been insane to follow. Tellingly, even after their apologies and backpedaling, the original tweet and 8chan link stayed up for a total of 15 hours before being deleted.
posted by Monster_Zero at 8:00 AM on February 27, 2019 [1 favorite]


To what degree is this bad for them? They have their audience, and they seem to like it. The trashgoblins praised them in the AMA, and they cheerfully accepted that praise. Somehow I feel like this is talking about damaging the brand of, say, a Republican congressman. But this is how I feel about the vocal fans of most major games. I like low-key games, not just because I only have time and interest for them but because they involve the fewest psychopaths.
posted by Countess Elena at 8:02 AM on February 27, 2019 [18 favorites]


(It's sad, on reflection, that I've so completely accepted this idea that this is who hardcore gamers are and this is what they do. But I sure as hell didn't get it overnight.)
posted by Countess Elena at 8:09 AM on February 27, 2019 [12 favorites]


To what degree is this bad for them? They have their audience, and they seem to like it.

When you're a AAA studio, you can't just sell to the trashgoblins, who aren't as numerous as they make themselves out to be. There are a lot of gamers (hardcore and otherwise) who want nothing to do with this,and who will not be interested in looking at THQNordic titles in the future, such as myself.
posted by NoxAeternum at 8:12 AM on February 27, 2019 [33 favorites]


The answer to the question "What were they thinking?" is almost always "They weren't thinking."
posted by tommasz at 8:15 AM on February 27, 2019 [6 favorites]


I don't think I've played any THQ Nordic games.

Are they based in Austria?
posted by doctornemo at 8:26 AM on February 27, 2019 [1 favorite]


You have to be extraordinarily clueless to pull something like this off. The Waypoint article on this shows screenshots of the actual AMA. The two people from THQN answering questions are very much getting into the 8chan spirit, so either they know exactly what they're doing or they're putting a lot of effort into playing along with something they either don't understand or know about, and the latter implies astounding levels of incompetence for a PR specialist.

Given the history of game developer PR people suggesting they were ignorant despite a history of working at alt-right-affiliated sites, it's very hard these days to make a case that this is all out of ignorance.

To what degree is this bad for them? They have their audience, and they seem to like it.

Unfortunately, hard to say. The most obvious comparison I can think of is Play-Asia, an import game store that leaned hard into their own "SJWs are ruining games" campaign on Twitter a few years back. Play-Asia's still around and it's hard to tell if there's been any lasting negative impact as a result of that campaign. Play-Asia didn't go so far as to routinely post on a site known for harboring child porn, though.
posted by chrominance at 8:31 AM on February 27, 2019 [8 favorites]


There's definitely a lot of private overlap between game developers and supremacist fascism...

Despite Fascist ruthlessness and obsession with courage, strength, and manhood, Mussolini did not actually make the trains run on time.

Despite ultra-macho death-march work ethics and emergency-as-normal office culture, modern game development studios are constantly missing deadlines, and go bankrupt at hilarious rates.

Guys I'm starting to question this whole whole triumph-of-the-will culture thing.
posted by Western Infidels at 8:33 AM on February 27, 2019 [46 favorites]


We have to stop believing that these things are mistakes that happen in some kind of vacuum. People know what 8chan is. It's an obvious lie to say that someone whose job involves being Very Online doesn't know what 8chan is. For that matter, it's extraordinarily unlikely that people from THQ Nordic are not behind-the-scenes friends with people associated with 8chan - this is a fairly small and extremely political world, as anyone who is Very Online knows.

It is abundantly clear that many, many powerful tech and gaming people are alt-right/white supremacists/neo-nazis or else fellow-travelers who are happy enough to tolerate the violence and harassment if it keeps their gaming spaces comfortably white/straight/male/compliant. The smarter ones keep their mouths shut at work or when posting under their real names, but again and again and again they forward the interests of their buddies.

This whole "ooooohhh, whoops, I a highly compensated professional don't know anything about a major aspect of my professional world, sorry about the naziism" thing is lies. They know that everyone will default to "they're just stupid, most mistakes come from stupidity" and that this will give them cover.

If you give professional opportunities to nazis in this day and age, it's not because you're dumb, it's because you want to give professional opportunities to nazis.
posted by Frowner at 8:34 AM on February 27, 2019 [86 favorites]


Some context here: THQ Nordic are the publishers of Metro Exodus, one of the most anticipated games this year, which came out a couple weeks ago. (Last fall NVIDIA used lots of Metro Exodus content to show off the new features in their RTX GPUs.) They were already in hot water with PC gamers for their decision to pull the game from Steam in favor of the Epic Store.

It's a shame, as a big fan of the STALKER series I was really looking forward to that one.
posted by neckro23 at 8:49 AM on February 27, 2019 [3 favorites]


Hmm...

https://www.thqnordic.com/games/aces-luftwaffe-squadron

THQ "Nordic" in Austria, which as any fule kno, is famously southern.

I don't see how anyone could have predicted this.

(Note: There are supposedly screencaps showing at least one participant in the AMA frequented 8chan before the AMA, per somethingawful)
posted by "mad dan" eccles at 8:56 AM on February 27, 2019 [1 favorite]


I don't see how anyone could have predicted this.

THQ Nordic, the Austrian game publisher, is a subsidiary of a Swedish game retailer also called THQ Nordic. And if publishing a game about fighting Nazis means you're a Nazi, the whole industry is overdue for reckoning. (It is, granted, but not because of the Nazi-fighting games.)
posted by skymt at 9:18 AM on February 27, 2019 [4 favorites]


I imagine that one side effect of this will be that gamers who feel uncomfortable being associated with Nazi paedophiles* will also feel uncomfortable buying, or admitting to playing, THQ Nordic games.

cue: “Well, actually, it's classical-liberal/ethno-traditionalist ephebophile, thank you very much!”
posted by acb at 9:44 AM on February 27, 2019 [2 favorites]


I looked at their Wikipedia page and I’ve never heard of any of their titles. Are they considered a major player in the US?
posted by freecellwizard at 11:00 AM on February 27, 2019


Sort of - they came about by buying the old THQ assets. They've managed to get a few decently regarded franchises, such as Darksiders and the Metro series.
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:06 AM on February 27, 2019 [1 favorite]


To what degree is this bad for them? They have their audience, and they seem to like it.

I love the Darksiders franchise, but hadn't yet picked up the 3rd game in the series. But I guess I'll be giving that one a miss.

They are distributors for several other games on my wishlist.
posted by straight at 11:12 AM on February 27, 2019 [1 favorite]


When I was younger I loved video games. I read video game magazines/websites whenever I could. I wanted to be a game developer. I wanted to surround myself with the thing I loved more than anything else. Sometime during high school I got a license and a girlfriend and put away the video games for a while since I was focused on other things. This was around the PS2 era. By the time I went to college I had kinda forgot about it and studied other things. A few years back I tried to get back into my old hobby. It was unrecognizable. I couldn't play a game without running into toxic behavior. It didn't take long before I mostly gave up on games again outside of a few Mario games. Thanks gamers. You made me hate something I loved.
posted by downtohisturtles at 11:15 AM on February 27, 2019 [7 favorites]


I wouldn't be surprised if this doesn't affect THQ Nordic in the long run. The folks who know what 8chan is are by and large the same folks who know what THQ Nordic is and have already formed an opinion of them. The folks who are undecided on or unfamiliar with THQ Nordic probably don't know what 8chan is, or how much of a smoldering cesspool it is, and come away with "The game publisher I'm vaguely familiar with did a questionable AMA"

THQ Nordic doesn't make "AAA" games, they make mostly budget niche games the same way THQ did before them. Some of them are recognizable franchises, but none of them have the polish you expect from a big-budget $60 game like Read Dead Redemption 2 or God of War. Some of THQ Nordic's games may get sold for $60, for a little while, then quickly drop in price. Ultimately the only PR I've seen hurt a video game developer is if they publish a game that isn't as good as fans wanted it to be. Remember the damn puddles from Spider-Man? These are Gamers' priorities.

I bet EA putting out highly-anticipated Anthem and it being pretty disappointing will hurt EA a lot more than THQ Nordic (un)intentionally courting CP aficionados.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 11:26 AM on February 27, 2019


Some context here: THQ Nordic are the publishers of Metro Exodus, one of the most anticipated games this year, which came out a couple weeks ago. (Last fall NVIDIA used lots of Metro Exodus content to show off the new features in their RTX GPUs .) They were already in hot water with PC gamers for their decision to pull the game from Steam in favor of the Epic Store.

As certain developers are taking pains to point out for some reason, there is a Swedish parent company THQ Nordic and an Austrian child developer THQ Nordic - the latter of which is most directly responsible for this. Metro Exodus appears to be published by Koch Media, which is a sibling of the Austrian THQ Nordic, not a child.
posted by atoxyl at 11:28 AM on February 27, 2019 [1 favorite]


THQ Nordic doesn't make "AAA" games, they make mostly budget niche games the same way THQ did before them.

What that really means is that their margins are tighter and they can't spend their way out of bad word of mouth.
posted by tobascodagama at 11:28 AM on February 27, 2019 [6 favorites]


Meanwhile, this moderator comment on /r/games, though:
THQ has canceled the AMA, and this thread is flooded with people trying to defend pedophilia, so we're going to lock it.
posted by tobascodagama at 11:40 AM on February 27, 2019 [6 favorites]


kalessin: Wow. There's definitely a lot of private overlap between game developers and supremacist fascism (e.g. GamerGate, KotakuInAction, and Minecraft's original developer's problematic PUA stuff).

Speaking as a game developer, I have to disagree here. Gamergate and KotakuInAction are all about attacking game developers. The whole thing started as a harassment campaign against a game developer. By and large, game devs see this and don't like it. There's a lot of rhetoric on the Gamergate/KIA side about "We're just defending game devs agains the SJWs", but game devs see this for the nonsense it is.

So what happened here? Maybe things are different in Austria; maybe everything I know about game devs only applies to American game devs. But then, THQ Nordic is primarily a publisher, not a developer, and the AMA was hosted by their PR director. I doubt there were any game developers involved in the decision to do this.
posted by baf at 12:11 PM on February 27, 2019 [12 favorites]


Hbomberguy just did a video called "Woke Brands" about the Gillette video, the MAGA Chuds destroying their Keurigs and Nikes and all that fun stuff — and how, basically, brands are jumping on this sort of outrage as free advertising.

If you watch to the end, past the credits, Hbomb warns of companies doing this the other way — and I'm pretty sure this is what THIS is. By doing a 8chan AMA, THQ Nordic gets a ton of press from people outraged that they're going to 8chan... and thus, appear to be "sticking it to the SJWs" to the worst elements of gamer culture.

So, yeah, I kinda think this might be a "just don't look" situation.... which is rich considering I've been following the coverage and am here on a MeFi thread talking about it.

HOORAY?
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me at 12:32 PM on February 27, 2019 [9 favorites]


By doing a 8chan AMA, THQ Nordic gets a ton of press from people outraged that they're going to 8chan... and thus, appear to be "sticking it to the SJWs" to the worst elements of gamer culture.

Which might have worked...except that 8chan also openly supports pedophiles, which is the sort of thing that no company wants its name attached to.
posted by NoxAeternum at 12:43 PM on February 27, 2019 [2 favorites]


This is bigger than it looks in terms of the number of games affected by potential boycotts, THQ Nordic has been buying up a number of smaller developers in the last 10 years, in addition to other properties picked up from the remnants of the original THQ: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_THQ_Nordic

And these are just the companies owned by the same Swedish parent company THQ Nordic AB, not all the ones developed by indie studios and distributed by THQ Nordic GmbH.
posted by JauntyFedora at 12:57 PM on February 27, 2019


I do wonder if THQ Nordic AB will be suddenly inspired to make the separation between themselves and THQ Nordic GmbH clearer. I know that a lot of AB's other subsidiaries have been quick to distance themselves from GmbH (as seen upthread.)
posted by tobascodagama at 1:05 PM on February 27, 2019


Oh, for sure there's a lot of cluelessness, sexism, racism, and apathy within the industry. I'm not arguing that. You point out the example of Notch, and he's a good example. I just object to the specific examples of Gamergate and KIA as representing the views of game developers.
posted by baf at 1:10 PM on February 27, 2019 [2 favorites]


except that 8chan also openly supports pedophiles, which is the sort of thing that no company wants its name attached to.

I think you might be very surprised at what certain companies are cool being associated with.
posted by kjs3 at 3:45 PM on February 27, 2019 [3 favorites]


I just object to the specific examples of Gamergate and KIA as representing the views of game developers.

There is also the difference between support for reactionary views, and the lack of courage to stand up to those views. Some developers had the cultural cachet to be visibly upset about Gamergate, and some did it anyway and were attacked, but most were too cowardly to do anything in the moment but silently changed their creative direction. The 2015 E3 was notable for a big uptick in playable female protagonists, although Feminist Frequency does point out that usually that means there's a choice between male and female protagonists and not a sole female protagonist that men are expected to empathise with, as women are expected to with sole male protagonists.
posted by Merus at 4:37 PM on February 27, 2019 [1 favorite]


As an aside, when Metro Exodus was suddenly made an Epic Store exclusive about a month ago, one of the things that came out of the ensuing controversy was THQ Nordic AB saying they intended to change their name later that year to better differentiate the parent company from THQ Nordic GmbH, aka the people who like to hang out on 8chan.

Guess they'll be accelerating that process some.
posted by chrominance at 4:39 PM on February 27, 2019 [5 favorites]


On the other hand, one of the participants in the AMA, Reinhard Pollice, is a significant shareholder in the main holding corporation.
posted by NoxAeternum at 4:42 PM on February 27, 2019 [3 favorites]


I’m all for people playing their favourite video games, but dear God, is gamer “culture” ever a toilet.
posted by tantrumthecat at 5:48 PM on February 27, 2019 [9 favorites]


Hopefully this’ll be the end of both THQ Nordic GmbH as a company and Philipp Brock as a employee and a public individual. Slime.
posted by Haere at 6:48 AM on February 28, 2019


Game Informer's Imran Khan spells it out: The Industry Refuses To Hold Itself Accountable And THQ Nordic Proves It:
Over the past week, I have received a number of DMs and emails from developers who work for THQ Nordic or their parent company also named THQ Nordic. They range from embarrassed to shocked at the lack of a proper response. One email relayed a story about a conversation with their Human Resources representative in a non-official capacity over lunch as they discussed the issue. The HR representative remarked that they did not receive any official guidance about it, but that they expect the whole thing to blow over. They’re right, it did, and that should speak poorly of the industry as a whole.

I keep thinking about how Loftis called out THQ Nordic for having the tweet still up for so long after they claimed remorse for it. I cannot pretend to know what she was thinking when she did it, but shaming the company into removing it probably saved their own developers a lot of the embarrassment and disgust they were feeling having to go into work the next day, even if no one could prevent it. When the industry does bad things, the industry needs to call it out – this includes the powerful people who work in it, the media that covers it, and the community. We also need to not let it go. That’s my challenge for all of us, following through however we can.

Despite multiple inquiries, THQ Nordic’s PR has not responded to my questions this week. I expect they are waiting for this whole thing to blow over. I intend to keep following up.
If we want to make gaming better, we need to hold feet to the fire here. This cannot be allowed to be swept under the rug.
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:49 PM on March 1, 2019 [3 favorites]




As Waypoint's Patrick Klepek put it:
I’m not ready to let this go, and you shouldn’t be, either. This wasn’t an ordinary mistake, and it requires more than an ordinary, boilerplate “apology” meant to generate friendly headlines while the news cycle inevitably advances.
The fact is that the people involved are still gainfully employed (and in the case of Pollice, still on the Board of Directors.) This is a "sorry you were offended" nonpology in the same vein as the ones given by Riot in the wake of Kotaku reporting on their toxic workplace, and should be rejected in the same vein.
posted by NoxAeternum at 4:28 AM on March 5, 2019 [2 favorites]


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