The company blamed “a series of mistakes” and inconsistent font rendering.
Archived version: https://archive.is/20260606180621/https://www.theverge.com/games/945088/gog-apologizes-email-nazi-symbols-the-end-of-the-sun
So there’s only one of the other runes, but they doubled up the lightning rune to create the SS symbol. What an unfortunate “coincidence”.
looks different on my system, I’m also missing symbolsAnd all three coincidentally famous Nazi symbols.
These were some pretty egregious mistakes indeed. I think the biggest one is noticing that it is inappropriate-looking for audiences in Germany, but somehow they didn’t stop to think whether it would be appropriate for everyone else?
I’m not going to boycot GOG over a major gaffe like that but, it’s a mournful day for the anti-Steam purist gaming consumers we see around here. Just another instance of Steam winning by doing nothing while competition trips over itself again.
Yeah this seems like a very stupid unforced error. The devs didn’t provide this, they internally were like “don’t send that to Germany, yikes!”, and then went ahead anyway?
Even if they’d been like “Oh, you’re right that looks a bit too Nazi, let’s just put one of them so it doesn’t” then this would be another boring marketing email.
“winning by doing nothing” They do stuff. Like killing ownership, buying tons of yachts because their owner is a literal billionaire, and squeezing every last cent while gaslighting everyone into thinking they’re somehow “pro-consumer”. This is how they got here in the first place. They also appear to have a growing hate problem, but I haven’t yet read the links I’ll be sharing here, so take these with a grain of salt for now: 1, 2. They get away with all this because they have a captive audience, each user doesn’t want to give up their library, or each user has already bought one of those steam devices becoming even more captive.
GOG doesn’t have a captive audience, and this is by their own design. We take their DRM-free, launcher-free nature for granted. Yet it seem they don’t understand that themselves, and continue burning the good will they earned on things like this, or continuing their obsession with LLM generated art. They can’t keep tanking controversy after controversy.
DRM-free can continue without GOG, but it’ll be handicapped severely without them. Is this what GOG wants?
Thanks for showing up. And yes you’re correct, “doing nothing” is a meme, dervied from the fact that Epic, Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony are all outwardly very anti-consumer, while Valve is simply less so. Yes they have done some shady things over 20 years, however they have also done wonders in the field of Linux game compatibility, helping (with credit to the non-Valve developers) break Microsoft’s monopoly on operating systems for PC gaming. In contrast, GOG has done little besides provide the occasional script, Linux version of their official library manager is only now in development after 10 years of begging for it.
Yes, you can still play DRM-free games, FOSS games and get some games directly from the publisher, but in terms of distributors, you’re essentially left with itch.io (unless the time they removed nsfw games from CC processor pressure is also a bridge too far for you).
while Valve is simply less so
Which company was it that popularized the lootboxes so bad that Notch made a parody of their game in Minecraft’s earliest April Fool’s version? Oh it’s Valve. Which company has been extremely instrumental in killing the ownership of games, making the idea of having to be online and connected to an unaccountable corporation based in the USA to play a single player game so much more palatable? Look, it’s Valve again. Even their quaint “”“wonders”“” for Linux (creating yet another distro, forking wine, and porting their DRM launcher?) are such a naked embrace, extend and extinguish effort going very smoothly because they’re not Microsoft, despite being quite literally of Microsoft origins, down to the anti-trust saga.
Valve isn’t doing nothing. You think so because like you’ve noted, itch.io went into this payment processor kerfuffle, despite Valve also going into it but nobody else. Plus, GOG themselves aren’t helping matters with their own actions, not just the double sig runes and their strange and ineffective apologies, but also the obsession with LLM generated art among countless moments of getting caught with their pants down. Meanwhile, Zoom-Platform is relatively quiet, for better or worse, and I never hear anything from Fireflower Games.
Dont forget Valve’s lootboxes.
I actually wanted to mention that and the “trading cards” that literally milk the users out of thin air, but I didn’t find a good place for them in my post. Thanks for mentioning them.
Please explain, how the trading cards, that you get for free, can just ignore or even sell for a few cents, milk anything out of anyone.
Is it because Steam forces you to complete badges for all your games, otherwise their Death Squad will come to your home?
Before, you just played the game. Now when you play the game, these things fill your “inventory” out of thin air, and you can make transactions with them including buying them (to complete your collection out of FOMO, etc), of which Valve earns a cut out of them, again, out of thin air. Now scale that up to millions of users. Hmmm, it IS milking! Can’t expect any less from the House of Valve.
In itself, the argument is sound. A lot of media is censored specifically for China or predominantly muslim-governed countries. It’s just standard corporate bootlicking.
The context makes it awkward. For example, most of Asia neither knows nor cares about nazis because it’s not who oppressed them, so I don’t seem them having an issue with it in this sense. But then again, I’m not sure of Gog’s presence in Asia…
I’m struggling to figure out how they even ended up with it. So far as I can tell, 𖥞 is from a symbol from the Cameroon Bamum language, having nothing to do with the game. ꥟ is a character from Sumatran dialects, but it at least looks like a sun, so I could maybe see that. That said, the ϟ, nonetheless repeated, seems inexcusable. Its specifically Greek koppa, not the Old Norse ᛋ (the sowilō character they reference in their apology) and I see no reason to use it twice.
Honestly, the only way I can think of that this was included, was it being AI generated and unmonitored. Why else would they combine a random Bamum symbol, a Sumatran symbol, and what is pretty clearly an SS emblem?
I was assuming that they used that wheel symbol as a stand-in for the black sun symbol that the Nazis also used. But I also wonder if it’s just AI and some very dumb people. The AI might have encountered these symbols in training on some weird occult neo nazi forums or something, and when prompted to generate some cool runes, it put these in. Either that or the person who did this knows exactly what they’re doing and just pretends to have made a mistake.
GOG is Polish right? I’d expect better of them, the SS symbol should be commonly known. There’s no way this should’ve gotten past multiple people, it’s inexcusable
The AI might have encountered these symbols in training on some weird occult neo nazi forums or something
Unfortunately, the double koppa as a Nazi symbol is neither new or rare, esspecially relative to the fequency of other patterns of symbols. Seeing as LLMs just output common text, its unfortunately unsuprising that this would be among the results if limitted to symbols.
There’s no way this should’ve gotten past multiple people, it’s inexcusable
Thats the trick. Has GOG gone so far downhill that they publish unreviewed AI output, is it that the company hired a Nazi and put him in a global marketing role with zero oversight, or does the company have a more widespead Nazi problem?
None of the possibilities here are good, and the fact that the apology doesn’t even try to address any of these seems even worse.
To me, it is the fact that they used that S-like symbol twice in a row. I don’t care what that Unicode character is supposed to actually represent on its own. The juxtaposition of having two of the character together like that is clearly an intentional subtle wink from someone.
intentional subtle wink
I’m not convinced it is, just because the other symbols are so random. Like, if it was a human, you’d think they’d at least use other runes, or would use something more standard like, ☉ or ☼, or would at least put in some effort to disguise it. I mean, if they actually wanted to make it subtle, they may even have actually used the sowilō symbol, given that that is what the SS runes originate from. Instead, its Koppa, undisguised, front and centre. An AI on the other hand, would just output random symbols with common patterns, such as this.
Then again, Nazis aren’t exactly known for being smart, so…
Thought the headline said “GOP apologizes for emailing people Nazi symbols”… Only thing that stood out as odd was that they’d apologize: I mean, that’s their brand.
The young republicans would double down.
Oh no
The second comment from the devs is telling - sounds like they sent the message and then GOG just appended some emojis to it, and the devs were unaware.
Now ofc that’s from the devs directly, but considering it’s so oddly specific, it’s hard to imagine they made that up.
I have the email in question but I dont see the symbols.
It didn’t go out to everyone with the emojis attached (I got it, partner didn’t). No clue wtf, really
German language version apparently didn’t have them, but other languages had the symbols. No idea if there were later waves of the newsletter that were send out after they were “corrected.”
isn’t archive. is that shit site?
og link: https://www.theverge.com/games/945088/gog-apologizes-email-nazi-symbols-the-end-of-the-sun
I mean I see what they were trying to do. The kolovrat has a lot of controversy that it’s debated to be a modern symbol of neo slavic pegans. Not so much a neo nazi symbol, but a lof work that the creator of the kolovrat has faked a ton of historical slavic pegan records so take it as you will.
Edit: oh I see they were trying to use SS bolts…😬 fuck them then
The dude spent a fortune to get back his company, to do this?
Hey! On other news, Coca-Cola has denounced Putin and his invasion of Ukraine just 5 minutes ago! Aren’t they brave!? They will be absolutely exciting the ruzzian market in just 20 years! They are so quick. Such a symbol of democracy.
OH COME ON!!! Just when I start buying from GOG after hearing good things for years.
Now they’re nazi???
Nope. It’s too late to request refunds, but it’s never too late to not ever buy from them again.
Edit: Ummm…I’m being downvoted for not supporting nazis??? Explain please.
Seems like it was a mistake from a staff member but if you want to go scorched earth on an entire company for the actions of whoever made that email then go ahead and buy licenses you don’t own from the competition.
This is pretty bad but having read the apology and explanation it was either one or two people who made this email or one of two people using AI assistance that made the email.
Seeing as how they apologized and acknowledged the mistake and mentioned being understaffed on a banking holiday I’m not going to hold the actions of one or two against the entire company who said they were against that action.
Also, Polish people famously hate Nazi’s as anyone should so I’m really just not buying in to the whole ragebait on this to be honest.
Had they not apologized for the actions of that employee I would have boycotted.
You’re downvoted for throwing the Nazi word around like it’s cabbage. People might agree this situation was a fuckup, going full tilt on it though is an overreaction.
Not op, but I struggle to see how this could possibly be an accident. I don’t feel like accusing GOG of at least having a nazi problem to some capacity in their company is that unbelievable. Like I aint gonna be buying from them anymore, cause like I said, I struggle to see how this could have been an accident.
Not saying it was like that here, but I’m giving an example for your understanding.
Two kinds of jobs are specialists, or someone who knows what they’re doing and drones, or someone who doesn’t have to know what they’re doing as long as they get things pushed their way done.
A drone doesn’t know and doesn’t care what those symbols are, they just do their job regardless of the connotations.
A specialist knows entirely what it’s all about and makes informed decisions.
Now a company can have, among other types, drones or specialists top to bottom or a random mix. So often enough there are cases where everyone just does what they’re told without wasting a single brain cell in the process, whether as drones who just do as told or as malicious compliance officers due to various constraints.
The world is large and diverse. Situations beyond our knowledge happen all the time. Which is why I’m opting for keeping an open mind. Otherwise, should anything beyond the ordinary happen to me, reality won’t matter anymore, just these fixed expectations of public opinion.
That still means someone at GOG told someone else somewhere in the chain to do this, because the devs apparently didnt. Someone at GOG made a conscious decision to add those symbols, even if a hundred other people were just following orders.
Well, according to the poor explanation given shortly after, someone did do that.
Okay buddy Nazi.
Nazis down voting, don’t worry about it
