Transphobes are doxxing Stardew Valley fans after they asked the game developer for pronouns
Transphobes are doxxing Stardew Valley fans after they asked the game developer for pronouns
On the request itself: based on extracted XNB files, I think that the game currently handles the MC gender in a really, really simple way: pick one text string if the character is male, else pick another string. Adding pronouns sounds like a deceptively large amount of work, and odds are that it would require at least some rework on how the game interprets text strings, in a way that might even affect languages where this is not an issue (like Turkish and Hungarian).
So if I were in CA's shoes, I'd probably compromise by letting the player pick a non-binary character, and use "they" for that character; that would affect mostly English, perhaps Mandarin*.
On the doxxing and harassment: do I need to say that this is fucking awful for those people???
On CA's silence: CA is notably silent and non-combative even on things that affect him directly; such as when the Android players were harassing him because of the delayed 1.5 version. Don't get me wrong, I do think that he should publicly condemn the current events (it's the morally right thing to do), but this might take a while.
*among the languages supported by the game, I believe that this is mostly an issue only in Mandarin and English - because neither has grammatical gender, but both have gendered pronouns "hot-wiring" to the social gender. This is certainly not an issue in Hungarian or Turkish (no grammatical gender + gender-agnostic pronouns), and odds are that it isn't a big deal in Japanese (where people generally drop the pronoun).
I am not sure on what I'm going to say, but I feel like in the Romance languages and Russian, due to the existence of grammatical gender, there's an "intuitive" understanding that the word forms that you use do not need to match your gender identity, both are separated things. I'm saying this because both non-binary Portuguese speakers whom I know simply... well, they use the feminine and done? So it's probably not a big issue. I'd like input from non-binary speakers of those languages though; since I'm not non-binary myself it's possible that my view is incorrect. Also, if pronouns are added to the game, I'm interested on how it would handle gender agreement.
"I truly do not care if ConcernedApe speaks on pronouns in the game any more,” one user said. “I want [him] to condemn the transphobia and violence against the trans members of the community.”
How in the hell is this his responsibility? We have to prove our allegiances now? If I ever become a game dev I'm keeping my head down.
A totally proportional reaction to the request to add a few words to the game...
However, I still find that the petition exaggerates
There is a huge problem with the game though. When starting a new farm you are tasked with creating a character, but there are only two gender options to choose from. [..] For many trans and non-binary players, the gendered language in the game can feel incredibly disheartening, and invalidating, causing feelings of dysphoria when misgendered while they are playing.
That's quite dramatic.
He doesn't have to do fuck all. Of all the game developers he doesn't owe anyone shit. He made an amazing game that was his personal project then continued to support it for years when he didn't have to and never charged for added content. If you have a problem with the game that bad then find another one. Vote with your wallet. That said fuck the doxxers, everyone involved is just being shitty.
Oh no how horrible.