GOG pulls insensitive #WontBeErased tweet, says it "should focus only on games"
Was "a pun".
Digital retailer GOG, which lives under the CD Projekt roof, has found itself in more Twitter hot water after insensitively appropriating the political hashtag #WontBeErased.
WontBeErased is a human rights movement fiercely retaliating reported Trump administration plans to reverse Obama-era recognitions of gender fluidity.
GOG, yesterday, tweeted: "Classic PC games #WontBeErased on our watch. Yeah, how's that for some use of hashtags?"
The tweet was quickly removed but not before being captured and discussed on the popular ResetEra forum and, of course, Twitter.
GOG responded in a tweet this afternoon.
"Yesterday, we posted a tweet containing a trending hashtag as a pun," the response read. "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."
It's not the first time GOG's tweets have been called into question. In September, CD Projekt apologised for a reference to a transphobic meme ("did you just assume their gender?") tweeted by the official Cyberpunk 2077 account. "Sorry to all those offended by one of the responses sent out from our account earlier," CD Projekt said. "Harming anyone was never our intention."
And back in July, GOG apologised after it tweeted an image with GamerGate associations. When I visited GOG recently, managing director Piotr Karwowski told me it was "a really stupid mistake". Yet, here we are again. Only, the response this time feels less sincere and doesn't read as an apology.
The incident taints what is otherwise a historic day for GOG, owing to the exclusive release of Witcher-related game Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales and the launch of Gwent 1.0.
Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales is a single-player story with the kind of depth, production values and tone CD Projekt Red rightly earned acclaim for with The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Don't let its being a card game put you off. You can read my full, enthusiastic Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales review elsewhere on the site.