“We once again want to stress our commitment to inclusivity in everything we do,” Berserk Games said on Twitter, “and would like to apologize for the handling of a user being ban from global chat.
TABLETOP SIMMULATOR BATTLESHEEP SIMULATOR
NzbahF9skF- Tabletop Simulator January 9, 2022 9, it issued a formal apology and vowed to take action. 8 statement on Twitter, “including profiling games with LGBTQ+ themes, designers, and writers as well as having members of the LGBTQ+ community to working on TTS directly.” Eventually, after seeing further evidence of her treatment on its official Discord, the company changed its tune. “ Tabletop Simulator supports the LGBTQ+ community,” it said in a Jan. “The suppression of identity,” she continued, “tells those people it’s not safe to be themselves in those spaces.”Īt first, when XoeAllred exposed the deficiencies in the company’s moderation policies, Berserk Games released a statement that seemed defensive. You can’t ask for games with gay/trans representation or about gay/trans experiences because you will get kicked. “On a fundamental level,” XoeAllred wrote in her Google document detailing these incidents, “this means that it is impossible to find queer community in chat, or to ask for queer games in chat. Regardless, this moderation tool denied players like XoeAllred the ability to describe basic facts about themselves in that space. Automated tools had made simply typing the word “gay” into the chat client a bannable offense.īerserk Games, which has not yet responded to Polygon’s request for comment, may have intended to prevent the use of the word “gay” as a pejorative term, although the use of the word “trans” apparently resulted in a similar ban. That same document also shows screenshots of chat logs and emails, in which her arguments appear to have either been met with defensiveness or silence. In a Google document that she shared online, XoeAllred detailed how on multiple occasions she attempted to directly engage with the team of moderators inside the game client and within Berserk Games’ official Discord server about this issue. XoeAllred was one of those players - until she received a temporary ban for mentioning in global chat that she is trans and gay. Throughout it all, Tabletop Simulator’s singular global chat system has welcomed players into its crowded and sometimes raucous lobby when they first log in. y8aTyXyILX- Xoe ️⚧️ blm & plm January 7, 2022 It's "not a place to discuss sexuality, fetishes, politics."
It's official, says it's fine to chat off topic, as long as it isn't "offensive" or "disruptive", but sharing you're gay or trans is inappropriate.
Today many game designers rely on Tabletop Simulator as a valuable tool for rapid prototyping, remote gameplay testing, community outreach, and even marketing for their own crowdfunding campaigns. When the pandemic lockdown hit in March 2020, the game took off, jumping from just over 5,000 concurrent players to more than 36,000 players in three months. Early on, there wasn’t all that much content in the game, but the tool itself - which allows players to digitally recreate board games, card games, and miniatures games, while blending in some physics simulation - showed promise. Tabletop Simulator was formally launched in 2015 after a successful crowdfunding campaign and a period in early access on Steam. As a result, Tabletop Simulator’s global chat function is now disabled, and the developer says it is reevaluating its moderation policies. This user and others shared screenshots that appear to show Tabletop Simulator banning any user who says the phrase “I’m gay.” Debate about this situation has played out on Twitter and in Steam’s reviews section, where two competing “ review bombing” campaigns have had an impact on the game’s rating. The user, who goes by the handle XoeAllred on Twitter, claims she was banned from global chat for referring to herself as trans and gay. Berserk Games, developer of Tabletop Simulator, courted controversy this week after a gay, trans user shared her experiences with its moderation team.
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