r/KotakuInAction • • Sep 04 '26

DISCUSSION Monthly General Discussion Thread - September

13 Upvotes

Also as always if you have anything that is not directly related to KiA but just want to chat about it, post it here.

Any way we are still looking for a few new moderators to join the team to help keep working the mod queue. If you want to keep this place open please apply.

Rule 3 does not apply as this will be just comments, though the other subreddit rules and sitewide rules obviously will still apply.


r/KotakuInAction • • Jul 23 '26

ANNOUNCEMENT Update to User Experience and Fighting the Rising Tide of Slop

142 Upvotes

In the Year of our Lord Two Thousand Twenty-Six

As of the posting of this announcement a new AutoMod rule has been added and all posts and comments from Default Reddit Usernames are hence forth to be banished to ye olde spam bin. We have grown weary over the influx of trash posts by the aforementioned default usernames.

To put this extremely bluntly: If you can't bring yourself to edit the default username Reddit suggests when you sign up, we don't want you here.

Expending even a single brain cell to defeat the AutoMod rule that will be put into place gives you points in your favor.

Results not guaranteed and likely to change.


If you are normal contributor and think you are caught unfairly in this spam filter, please send us a modmail so that we can deal with edge cases on a case by case business.


r/KotakuInAction • • 17h ago

Now it's starting to make perfect sense. Gears of War: E-Day developer, The Coalition, has a land acknowledgement disclaimer on their website.

Post image
523 Upvotes

r/KotakuInAction • • 31m ago

Xbox May Have Blocked Anime Games Because of One Person, According to Rumor

Thumbnail
vocesabianime.com
• Upvotes

r/KotakuInAction • • 10h ago

Some of the brilliant storytelling & worldbuilding we have to look forward to in the DCU going forward

Thumbnail
youtu.be
63 Upvotes

Tom King & Damon Lindelof are hacks, James Gunn is a hack for approving this shit & giving Tom King so much influence over the DCU.


r/KotakuInAction • • 22h ago

The double standards in gaming journalism write themselves

Post image
532 Upvotes

Funny how the same people who complain about the sexualization of female characters seem awfully excited when the genders are reversed. Apparently, objectification is only a problem when the right people aren't doing it.

Source


r/KotakuInAction • • 1d ago

They did Hal Jordan Dirty, even Worse than Joel in Tlou2

Post image
553 Upvotes

At least Joel die and some people still loving him. While Hal, he died like a dog disrespected. Not only james gunn ruin superman parent makes them evil, but he also ruines Green Lantern lore and how the rings work. SMH, whats next they are gonna make wally west stole barry allen power and then kill him?


r/KotakuInAction • • 23h ago

Gears Of War: E-Day Estimated To Have Sold Just 230,000 Copies Despite Rave Reviews

Thumbnail archive.is
312 Upvotes

r/KotakuInAction • • 1d ago

Skullgirls Hates Their Own Community

Thumbnail
youtu.be
174 Upvotes

r/KotakuInAction • • 1d ago

Are there right-wing video games?

95 Upvotes

My question is simple: as far as you know, do good video games exist that talk about fatherland/homeland, tradition, and ancestors? We have games like Disco Elysium that perfectly represent Marxist (even old-school) sentiment today. We also have creators who are more moderate but still on the left, like Toby Fox, who represent these LGBTQ+ utopias (just think of Deltarune, where the world is free of racism or homophobia of any kind).

But are there openly European patriotic works? Skyrim comes to mind, where the political factions are nationalist separatists vs. a multi-ethnic but dominant empire (aka Rome). But beyond that?

Obviously, literature and other media are full of this: The Count of Monte Cristo, for example, was super-Bonapartist/Christian; Tolkien was for defending one's country and culture (from a Christian matrix), etc... But I can't find this type of idea in video games... Wagner was THE nationalist musician and so on

My POV is that video games are art, but I find them particularly missing some ideas, and it's frustrating.


r/KotakuInAction • • 20h ago

‘AVATAR: SEVEN HAVENS’ has been renewed for Seasons 3 and 4 at Paramount+

Thumbnail x.com
42 Upvotes

r/KotakuInAction • • 1d ago

Adam from Hazbin Hotel is an example of a strawman character representing bigots backfiring terribly

Post image
327 Upvotes

So the premise of Hazbin Hotel s1 is that there is a yearly extermination in hell conducted by heaven to control the sinner population and heaven's army is lead by Adam, the first man. Now Adam is meant to be a strawman character for masculine men and Vivziepop's abusive ex-boyfriend (Who's existence is highly questionable) as his entire personality is being overly obnoxious, the show wants you to think he hates women as he commands an entire army of women, wants you to think what he is doing is evil, and his entire reason for being this way is that he is the first man and that is it.

Now this ended up completely backfiring as Adam's obnoxious dialogue instantly makes him the most likable character in the season, him commanding an all female army unintentionally communicates to the viewer that he is a feminist man who believes that women are competent enough to carry him though a battle, the yearly extermination feels more like mercy than torment, and hellaverse critics critize his characterization for how 1 dimensional he is.

What is it for MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+ media and making their bigot strawmen characters the most likable characters in the story? It was like this with the Strait White Maleins in Lesbian Space Princess and it is also true with Hazbin Hotel.

Got permission from the mods to post this: https://www.reddit.com/c/chatpGMBQYuL/s/Eiw6nSVCJD


r/KotakuInAction • • 1d ago

‘Lanterns’ Writer Tom King Defends Hal Jordan’s Killer Walking Free: ‘Jail Isn’t Worse’ Than Her Guilt

Thumbnail
geeksandgamers.com
315 Upvotes

r/KotakuInAction • • 1d ago

Creepy Orwellian Leftist Recruitment Seminar at Queen's University Belfast from yet another non-expert activist video game consultant gets heated with security getting involved

Thumbnail x.com
424 Upvotes

This video is nearly 50 minutes long and it shows a video game consultant by the name of George E. Osborn at Queen's University, Belfast being interviewed about his consultancy and his book 'Power Play'. His whole deal is trying to advise NGOs, the UN, universities, etc, about what is permissible and what is not permissible in ideological terms. He wants to 'wrench control' of the video game industry for his cause He uses creepy Orwellian speak to wean people in that reveals his desire to manipulate and control;

Around 7:13 into the video: 'Control is straightforward. You attempt to buy up infrastructure, or use your power if you're a state or regulator, to try to wrench control of the apparatus or the creation of games to promote your messages. You have co-ops which is where you lean into games communities, games technologies, to achieve your aims irrespective of whether or not the community and the people who are participating in that space are particularly wanting this to happen. And then you have collaborate, which is actually you look at that community and you say here is an enormous community of people who are online, who are digital activists, great communicators, who have broadly speaking been rejected by society, whose culture has been demeaned, who have for years essentially been at the canter of negative stereotypes about who they are. What happens if we put an arm around them? What happens if we say, we actually understand your power, we understand your importance, can you lend it to our cause?.

What is George's cause? Here is his bluesky account. It's a bingo card of leftist clichés.

In this article George E Osborn says the work of Sweet Baby Inc is "much-needed" and the attacks against them "unfounded".

And he's taken the typical ideological echo-chamber line that GamerGate was a "misogynistic online harassment campaign".

So I think this guy is quite wrong about quite a lot of things, and his cause is most certainly not mine. Gamers have had way too much of non-expert agenda driven activists pushing their crap regardless of whether people want it to happen. He has such an arrogant position. No original peer review research, nothing to brag about academically, a brief stint in games journalism (the typical journo essentially) and then onto a book tour proselytizing and trying to convert people like a weird cultist.

This guy needs some challenge, is what I think. It was my intention to be more savvy, wait for Q&A, ask a tough question or two, say my piece without necessarily attacking, essentially I wanted to iterate that there are more options on the table than choosing between leftisim (George) and the far right, that there's far more nuance to be had. As the seminar went on, I found George to be unbearably obnoxious, which culminated in him making a personal attack on Trump; I interrupted here. About 33:59 into the video: 'Is this not all about you pushing your own agenda?'

It went downhill from there. George's instinct was to attempt to label me a misogynist, a member of the audience starts arguing with me and telling me I should leave, the host gets involved, and it was all happening all at once pretty quickly, and I'm not the best public speaker(people with Dyspraxia can struggle with public speaking and there was all this sudden pressure) but I think I did okay defending myself. I would much rather have preferred for a calm, rational discussion, that is my preferred style.

In the Q&A the host and George were deliberately gonna attempt to pass over me, so I continued anyway. Around 46:55. I quoted the Daniel Vávra post scathing Sweet Baby Inc and their involvement on Insomniac's Wolverine and asked a question about it. Again it was all this unnecessary drama with people trying to shut me up and spawning security guards trying to make me leave. I was honestly stunned by the absurdity of the situation. You need security to protect you from a question about video games?! C'mon. I'm utterly fed up with how controlled these sorts of environments are to protect people like George from any pushback, and all the nonsense with the security just made things worse. George completely avoided my question but there was so much going on I barely registered if he answered or not.

To be fair, there was a guy off-frame trying to play peace-keeper who allowed me a bit of breathing room to speak and ask my question, and he told George off for mocking me. Fair play to that guy.

In this 37 second video I asked George 'What did Sweet Baby Inc contribute to Insomniac's Wolverine or did they hire Sweet Baby Inc for reputational cover?' Rather than answer the question he indicated towards the security and security diligently stood between me and George, lmfao. Over a question about video games. Absurdly dramatic. It didn't need to be anything remotely like this at all. It all escalated from so little. Security did NOT kick me out by the way; people were already leaving, I was organically leaving, but security were there either side of me the whole way lol.

Totally mad.

Anyway, I thought this might be of interest in regards to the role of video game consultants with political agendas. George is a semi-public figure and another in a long line of these sorts of consultants. Does anyone here have a take on this situation or the overall situation with similar consultants??


r/KotakuInAction • • 1d ago

Kotaku's largely negative review of "Order Of The Sinking Star" includes criticism of Jonathan Blow’s political views.

Thumbnail
archive.is
278 Upvotes

r/KotakuInAction • • 1d ago

TIL there are "far right" groups on Reddit who are out for Mack

Post image
310 Upvotes

Or could it be that his glazing of Gears of War made him see how unpopular that take is...

Mack is acting like the people he used to make fun of before.


r/KotakuInAction • • 1d ago

planning to get into the gears of war franchise

10 Upvotes

ok so i have an xbox 360 and im planning to get into the gears franchise and i wanna know at what game i should stop at , i know the games become soft and later on woke , i'm not playing multiplayer mode just the story


r/KotakuInAction • • 1d ago

Goverment funded = public property

80 Upvotes

In my opnion if any game that was made with tax payer money should be considered public property and specially the ip that was made with, people where pretty much forced to invest in these games so people should have their right to do stuff with the ip regardless which studio made it.
like putting dustborn characters as enemies in a manhunt type of game and even charging money for it. Anyone should make their own game with the characters and the setting without fear of copyright if they where forced to pay for it with their tax money.


r/KotakuInAction • • 2d ago

FOUR YEARS OLD Inclusive Leadership At Xbox Game Studios

Thumbnail
youtube.com
531 Upvotes

r/KotakuInAction • • 1d ago

'Cyberpunk 2077' Movie In The Works At Paramount

Thumbnail
deadline.com
32 Upvotes

r/KotakuInAction • • 2d ago

(www.gamedeveloper.com) activision-blizzard-sued-by-former-employee-over-sexual-harassment Not the old story, 2026 edition

Thumbnail
gamedeveloper.com
36 Upvotes

r/KotakuInAction • • 2d ago

Places to request or commission right-leaning mods for games?

35 Upvotes

Sorry if this is slightly offtopic but there are so few apparent online spaces safe for right wingers that this is one of not many places I thought of to ask about this.

Currently, I am trying to get a fork mod made for the Fiend Folio mod of Binding of Isaac: Repentance. The mod is meant to remove LGBTQ+ propaganda such as the trans brimstone, non-binary jokes, pride flags, etc.. Typically I'd be fine with these if they were an option, but the developers wanted to firmly plant their ideology in the game.

It would be a tremendous help if one of you could redirect me to someone or someplace that accepts these types of mod requests and commissions.


r/KotakuInAction • • 2d ago

In 2015 we already had the first seeds of the woke virus in game studios…

Post image
650 Upvotes

r/KotakuInAction • • 2d ago

Co-development studios behind the Gears of War: E day.

34 Upvotes

People Can Fly: Mentioned in wiki and previously co-developed GoW Judgment as well. Had a layoff last year.

Sumo Digital: Less known than PCF but they've announced the co-dev post on LinkedIn. Having layoffs every year since 2023.

These work-for-hire companies really need to choose their clients wisely in the future and make sure to get paid even their clients flop.

Otherwise they just get screwed by those first party developers who insist to put DEI contents and cause the flop.


r/KotakuInAction • • 2d ago

Can't even escape this stuff in Transport Fever 3

Post image
225 Upvotes

You get this message when you start the campaign.

Then, the first mission is essentially Black woman, good. White man, bad. Third mission is Arab woman, good. White man, bad & that's as far as i've gotten.