GOG published a letter with neo Nazi imagery, knowingly said it wouldn’t be okay in Germany, and sent the email to everywhere else. After a huge outrage they gave a meaningless apology without any real comitment to investigating how it happened or how they would ensure it never happened again.
Is there a source or proof on that? Or is it just that you didn’t find it right now on their website?
The big drama was during their “2026 sale”, where they used GenAI promotional art for the event. They also seem to have refused to confirm using GenAI, and at the time made no promise/commitment to stop.
Yeah and their defense was: we knew before that it looked bad, so we didn’t send it out to German speaking newsletter subscribers… Which recognised that they knew it looked the way it did, before they send it out. And even then the biggest question they never answered: Why send only that one symbol double? you know, the one symbol that “on some devices on some fonts” makes it an SS symbol, where the “intended” symbol doesn’t have any meaning or reason being doubled?
I want to like GOG, but that whole affair did not portray them from their best side.
This genuinely looked like a mistake, where was it reported they didnt send it to German users? I only saw that it was a German QA team that noticed it.
Article linked elsewhere seems to indicate it didn’t go to German users because the German QA team found the issue before it was sent, but due to an internal communication breakdown the issue didn’t make it back to the international team before the emails had already been sent. GOG immediately apologized for the mistake and changed their internal processes to catch these types of mistakes sooner.
It very much reads like an honest mistake, and even then it only impacted a subset of GOG users because it’s entirely dependent on the font used to render the email subject. The actual Unicode character used was a curved S (a letter from the Greek character set), but certain fonts render it looking more like the infamous SS symbol.
Thanks for posting this. Fucking Lemmy man. That reads like a genuine mistake to me… not everything is a conspiracy lol. If you just read the thread here, you’d believe that GOG were some underground Nazi apologists or something.
No, it was a fucking dog whistle for one simple reason: why use the last symbol double? If all of them were doubled or single? Sure, I could believe the mistake angle. But only that one symbol doubled where it doesn’t make any sense to double the “intended” symbol? I don’t believe it. That are too many coincidences necessary for me to believe it.
Just discovered that principle, while it’s true for many situations, it’s really effective because not everthing nor always everthing is simpler, the principle itself seems to be simplifying things; in the end, that principle is the same thing that bring us to many right-wing ideas which we heavly criticize
GOG is a good company we all pay for.
GOG published a letter with neo Nazi imagery, knowingly said it wouldn’t be okay in Germany, and sent the email to everywhere else. After a huge outrage they gave a meaningless apology without any real comitment to investigating how it happened or how they would ensure it never happened again.
Give it a few generations for the selection pressure of the market / the temptations of new leadership to take over.
Not with the AI generated images they use
They no longer use it.
I open it right now and all I see is flashy text with game cover art in the offers/deals pages.
DRM-free is a big plus.
Is there a source or proof on that? Or is it just that you didn’t find it right now on their website?
The big drama was during their “2026 sale”, where they used GenAI promotional art for the event. They also seem to have refused to confirm using GenAI, and at the time made no promise/commitment to stop.
The GOG that knowingly sent out emails with Nazi symbols in?
On some devices on some fonts
Come on man
Yeah and their defense was: we knew before that it looked bad, so we didn’t send it out to German speaking newsletter subscribers… Which recognised that they knew it looked the way it did, before they send it out. And even then the biggest question they never answered: Why send only that one symbol double? you know, the one symbol that “on some devices on some fonts” makes it an SS symbol, where the “intended” symbol doesn’t have any meaning or reason being doubled?
I want to like GOG, but that whole affair did not portray them from their best side.
I’m sure they gave a level-headed, reasonable, rational response
Didn’t get one.
Talking about GOG the DRM-free digital PC game store.
Yes they sent an email with the subject containing two runes resembling the SS logo.
“They didn’t notice”, but somehow they didn’t send it to German users
This genuinely looked like a mistake, where was it reported they didnt send it to German users? I only saw that it was a German QA team that noticed it.
Article linked elsewhere seems to indicate it didn’t go to German users because the German QA team found the issue before it was sent, but due to an internal communication breakdown the issue didn’t make it back to the international team before the emails had already been sent. GOG immediately apologized for the mistake and changed their internal processes to catch these types of mistakes sooner.
It very much reads like an honest mistake, and even then it only impacted a subset of GOG users because it’s entirely dependent on the font used to render the email subject. The actual Unicode character used was a curved S (a letter from the Greek character set), but certain fonts render it looking more like the infamous SS symbol.
I’m not German and I didn’t get the twisted cross email.
What?
https://www.heise.de/en/news/GOG-apologizes-for-newsletter-with-SS-runes-in-subject-11321683.html
Thanks for posting this. Fucking Lemmy man. That reads like a genuine mistake to me… not everything is a conspiracy lol. If you just read the thread here, you’d believe that GOG were some underground Nazi apologists or something.
No, it was a fucking dog whistle for one simple reason: why use the last symbol double? If all of them were doubled or single? Sure, I could believe the mistake angle. But only that one symbol doubled where it doesn’t make any sense to double the “intended” symbol? I don’t believe it. That are too many coincidences necessary for me to believe it.
Yeah my thoughts exactly.
As the saying goes, always check and double check your sources 😉
Holy shit do people need to get educated on Occam’s Razor.
In this case Hanlon’s Razor might be more relevant ;D
Just discovered that principle, while it’s true for many situations, it’s really effective because not everthing nor always everthing is simpler, the principle itself seems to be simplifying things; in the end, that principle is the same thing that bring us to many right-wing ideas which we heavly criticize
Yes!