A former BioWare employee says that EA's new management wasn't on board with the developer's inclusiveness.

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[–] 4 points 1 day ago (5 children)

Because the game was still developed. You don’t know what the replacement for the flag would be.

The removal of a symbol carries meaning, irrespective of what they would have replaced it with. Also, their motive in removing it had to do with anti-LGBTQIA+ policy in Saudi Arabia, so it most definitely wasn't to replace it with another open-minded option. This was censorship of the developers and, symbolically, of queer folk.

It’s just a flag in a videogame. I personally don’t care about that.

What you care about doesn't change the fact that censorship took place.

people put too much weight into this in my opinion

You can hold that view.

the censorship is meaningless

Symbols have meaning. Censorship of symbols, therefore, is symbolic censorship of the meaning of those symbols. The censorship is provably not without meaning.

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  • [+] -4 points 1 day ago (4 children)
  • [–] 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

    Again, we have gone over the political meaning. The lack of change to gameplay is irrelevant. The political meaning of the action is the significance, not the evidence of that action to the end-user.

    Edit:

    The context was @thingsiplay@lemmy.ml once again stating that the flag has no meaning, its removal has no meaning, and that it has no meaning because there is no impact on gameplay.

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  • [+] -4 points 1 day ago (2 children)
  • [–] 2 points 1 day ago (1 child)

    If we speak about real world rights, then it would be significant. But in a game lacking a flag, I think is not important.

    Again, the censorship of the flag, which is a symbol, is symbolically meaningful. The degree of significance is not the subject of debate.

    The flag doesn’t matter, what matters are the actions and story.

    To the gameplay, perhaps. But I am not discussing the gameplay. I am discussing how the removal of the flag is symbolic of opposition to LGBTQIA+ rights.

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