Relooted - Game made by South Africans has been bombarded by right-wingers

The game is about stealing African artifacts from the Western museums, set in the future. Of course, racists hate it and are going to call it 'woke'. I am personally very intrigued by the concept.

So, it's ok when Indiana Jones does it but not the other way around.
- It's not about consistency. It's about "I want therefore it is my divine right and other people aren't valid"
I had no idea this game existed, and your description just piqued my interest, so it seems like they may be Streisanding this shit lol
- It is precisely why I had to add the description because when I checked out the game upon reading this original post, I loved the idea of the game.
How's the gameplay? Anyone know if it's good?
- There's a free demo you can try
  https://store.steampowered.com/app/3972400/Relooted_Demo/
- Right? I want to do some reverse Indiana Jones liberating of artworks.
  “It doesn’t belong in a museum!”
That's funny as hell and now I'm buying it to trigger the snowflakes.

I feel really bad for the devs. Just trying to make a game and they get bombarded with harassment, racist bait, trolling, etc.

Is there anything to be done about this?

Edit: I reported a few threads for being obvious harassment

They could try not being black and from Africa
(Hopefully no /s needed but you can never be too sure these days)
- Ngl I wouldn't have needed a /s if we were in the early 2010s, but nowadays I'm not sure if someone is joking or actually serious.
Same, reported for harassment on a few of the blatantly racist jerks.
We should all be reporting these racist fucks and their reviews too.
- Steam reviews and community are both absolute cesspits all flooded with any kind of ism or ist because capital G Gamers and to bait for awards.

The Steam forums are the most repugnant and racist-filled psychotic right-wing shitholes I've ever encountered (and I once went to the Stormfront forums). Genuinely, Steam forums exhibit the most pure and concentrated anti-woke, "every single thought in my head was placed there by Ben Shapiro", "blacks are the real racists", x-phobic bigoted brain cancer on earth. I block them where I find them, report the ones that seem actionable, but it's like trying to hold off a tidal wave with a tennis racket.

The Steam forums are the most repugnant and racist-filled psychotic right-wing shitholes I’ve ever encountered
"Surely this person is sheltered"
(and I once went to the Stormfront forums)
buddy idk what you're doing on steam but the worst I get are youtube tier, which can sometimes be Stormfront tier but not higher than that on average.
- You don't understand "gatekeepers", who want to "go back to the good old days when games were a niche, made for gamers, and no corporate bullshit" (translation: "I want to turn gaming spaces a frat club for my kind").
Nowadays the main thought leader of right wing weirdos are Assmongold, they've left old Benny boy in the dust because he's too nerdy for their liking.
- Not to mention, Jewish.
I stopped using them a long time ago. Since they don’t seem interested in moderating their own forums in the slightest, Valve should really shut them all down. The Steam forums are such cesspits of hate speech, bigotry, and toxicity that I actually feel dirty every time I buy a game on Steam. That is not okay.
Posting and You
I block any of these idiots I see on steam and my block lost is over 2000 now....

Is the British Museum the final boss?

It better be. They ~~stole~~ saved so many artifacts!
- They did save quite a few artifacts, but there are plenty more that they just stole with no good reason. Like the Parthenon reliefs(?) Greece has been largely stable since it's independence was won from the Ottoman empire WW2 not withstanding, or any Scottish artifacts the English sully with their hands, or quite a few Egyptian artifacts. Though I do think artifacts should be split between the home country and the excavation teem be it University or country specific or whatever.
- Judging by the Benin Ivory mask in the artwork, it definitely looks like the british museum is involved somehow.

Black people: exist

Racists: NOOOO YOU CAN'T DO THAT REEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!1!1!1!!!

Yeah, reading Steam discussions ruined my day. Just full of racism under the vale of wokeness... Those fuckin' "Is this game woke?" threads we see everywhere these days might as well be "Does this game have any non-white male characters?"

They are worst that the stupid asses calling for characters to have a gender option in games with a story. I mean, anyone here didn't enjoy Die Hard because they could not relate to John's gender or sexuality during all those fun action scenes?

Now, on a totally unrelated topic:

Looking to buy this game, but I wanna know before giving them any money; do the devs prefer a penis or clit in their mouth?

It is so fucking stupid, because games would be so insanely boring if every character interaction was between straight, white, cis-het men, and no female character could ever pass the Bechdal Test.
Just like with movies and TV shows, I enjoy a variety of games that cover the entirety of the human experience. Why the fuck would I want to limit that??
- yea but these gamers aren’t thinking about you, or about the quality of art
  because this is what they want, they want the ethnostate in fiction just like they want it irl. they are white supremacists first and foremost
It’s hilarious! In the “is the game woke” thread, someone literally wrote:
To make analogy. In your world/culture its okay for China to steal all our furniture, devices in all western homes if the product is "made in China". It once belonged to China and could have been stolen...
- Holy shit! That might be the dumbest arguement I've ever heard. I might have heard worse, but nothing is coming to mind.
Fuck it. Moderator action.
Before the poster makes any other posts, they must answer the prompt: “Apologies! We’ve been dealing with an influx of hate speech and bigotry, so to clarify your concerns, could you please provide the intended meaning of the word “Woke” in this post?”
- Good simple solution, I love it! Auto moderation would indeed out them easily.
"Does this game have any non-white or non-male characters?"
FTFY

Ah yes, the "My ancestors rightfully stole this land and your existence is oppression, kefir!" crowd. We meet again.

I generally use Steam forums/news for relatively niche indie/AA games in the economic strategy/city-builder genres. Rarely do you encounter overly heated discussion with some exceptions around Denuvo use or a particularly intense debate about gameplay approaches.

But I have seen some sections of Steam that honestly look surreal due to the level of toxicity and the overall bad faith tone.

Valve should honestly police this stuff, they have more than enough resources to do so, but they won't since it goes against the "scalability and automation" mantra of modern technology companies.

P.S. I don't consider free speech issues to be relevant in this case. One can always start their own site/forum and spam it with whatever they like. If product owners finds this valuable, they can join the shitbox.

It's honestly embarrassing to be a gamer sometimes.
- I clearly am a gamer, but I hate that term. I wish there was a more neutral, almost formal term.
I don't know how to make Valve aware of the blatant racism going on. Maybe they only look at twitter and reddit and there needs to be a "shitstorm" about the harassment the devs are facing. It's despicable how it just continues to happen and there doesn't seem to be a "account banned for improper conduct" on most of those fasches.
Free speech issues are not relevant because it's a private company. Free speech is about limiting the government's ability to control speech, companies are always free to do so for their own reasons on their own platforms. While that can be problematic when you don't know whether the government is leaning on the companies behind the scenes, what the first amendment is really written to prevent is the overt fascist gestapo tactics the Trump administration is now using to bully their critics.
It is important to understand the constitution and why it was written, so people can act accordingly. It's especially important when the government is not acting accordingly.
- I am not American, I have a completely different perspective on this topic than most North Americans (lived there for a decade, as well as Europe and Asia for many years).
  I was using the term in a very broad sense. Think of it as more of an "off the cuff" remark.
It’s definitely not just indie games. I was looking forward to the Trails in the Sky remake, checked on its discussion forums, and it’s polluted with overblown “censorship” claims, sprinkled with “Guess the game FAILED cause it went WOKE” cringe.
If only Steam had something like BlueSky’s crowdsourced blocklists. That would be a freeform way of handling the issue.

I think the devs are making a mistake by reacting interacting the trolls.

They are people frothing at the mouth and sent on that steam page with a political agenda. It seems the devs think they will "change their minds" after they brought the topic of slavery for no reason...

So I will add this to my wishlist check if I can report the posts that are straight up insults or racists and move on.

The trolls in question can't stand that this game might be successful and there is nothing they can do beside review bombing at release which should trigger Steam's detection.

Don't feed the trolls and entertain them with a discussion...

Maybe the devs are acutely aware of the Streisand Effect and using the trolls to boost marketing.
There are numerous examples of boosts in sales when fascists try to villify something. I imagine Kimmel's viewership has increased even factoring in the markets he's pulled from.
Nothing generates mass support like Nazis hating on something; nothing destroys faster than a Nazi embrace.

On the plus side, I keep forgetting that this game exists and they keep reminding me, so... yay, free marketing?

I am not a fan of platformers and puzzles, in general, and am not too interested in this concept specifically. But I may end up buying it out of spite for hateful people. I also suggest taking a peek at their previous game Semblance which, although also a platformer, looks genuinely sort of novel to me (granted, as I said, I am not a fan of platformers in general so maybe it is in fact not unique at all). Feel free to take my thoughts with a large grain of salt, this is not really my area of expertise.

Link to the store page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3255890/Relooted/

Looks genuinely fun but omfg 2d platformer with 1060 and 12gb ram as low specs? Five years from now I wouldn't be able to play a modern three-in-a-row browser game it seems.
- 2D in gameplay, but it's a 3D game. Also, the 1060 is almost 10 years old. But most importantly, it's still a WIP. Optimisation for lower end PCs will probably happen last.
- My single 996 MEGAhertz processor, 512mb ram, 128mb vram setup could just about run Battlefield 2, Counter Strike Source, and Splinter Cell Chaos Theory. These games often had higher minimum requirements but I managed.
  Balatro, a modern card game, starts off with minimum requirements of two 3 GIGAhertz cores and a gigabyte of ram.
  Comparing AAA Valve with an indie dev isn't fair but it's objectively true that relatively simple concepts now require substantially more resources. That's like several Battlefield 1942 instances to 1 Balatro instance.

Steam needs to change discussion threads to default to owners only

Those comments are just sad.

The intense racism on steam is seriously fucked up. And it's ever-present.

The game does look fun though. It kinda reminds me of that old 2D Mirror's Edge game for old iPhones but a lot better.

Vector?

Plenty of racism in those forums playing out the “black on black” crime trope except it’s African on African crime, their fault for the slave trade, etc.