CD Projekt joint CEO Michał Nowakowski has issued a strongly worded response to accusations that the studio “is in a lot of trouble right now” because of “diversity hires,” saying the people peddling such nonsense need to “stop looking for conspiracy theories.”
“Seems we live in times where anyone can record complete nonsense and make a story out of it,” Nowakowski said in response to a post on X by YouTuber Endymion, who has a long history of stridently complaining about diversity and “wokeness” in videogames.
“CDPR talent leaving? We have the lowest rotation of people in recent years. DEI-driven recruitment? We hire based on merit and talent alone, just as we make games driven by artistic vision alone. Why did we choose [Unreal Engine]? Because it enables us to work on our games more efficiently and we remain cutting edge tech-wise. The Witcher 3’s director left? Well, yeah, more than 2 years ago… Now, can we stop looking for conspiracy theories and go back to making cool stuff?”
This is the case, the problem isn’t that there is racial diversity or LGBTQ people, it’s that a lot of AAA games are just horribly made at this point. Unfortunately I’ve seen quite a lot of people who miss that point and just use this as an opportunity to drop bigoted dogwhistles, and talk badly about how “LGBTQ are ruining games”, both being assholes and completely missing the point.
The funny thing is, my friend is LGBTQ - it’s not at all a dog whistle for them. It’s very real frustration at beloved games and IP being ruined
But they hear “go woke go broke” so often that they’ve been trained to look for inclusivity to blame. We like talking about topics like this, and each time I have to walk them through it again - “yes, the game is inclusive, yes, the game sucks. Let’s be precise and critique it, why does the game suck? What systems and processes keep causing this?”
I think my friend is doing this on purpose to help process the emotions, because it always ends with the same conclusion
"You think it’s a bad game because it is, you feel like it’s an attack because they went online and said you’re a bigot for thinking it’s bad, and we’re all biased but you’re self aware and this is coming from propaganda and very valid frustration, not hatred.
“Now let’s talk about the mechanisms through which consulting companies ruin everything we hold dear, and brainstorm ways to mitigate or fix these systematic problems. And would you look at that, you’re sounding just a little more like a leftist each time”
Identify the problem, trace it through the system, find the root cause, and brainstorm solutions/work arounds
Yeah there needs to be an effort to look for the problems, unfortunately the guy making fun of games because they suck and calling people “LGTVs” and making fun of queer people for “being woke” isn’t a prime example of that, it’s a prime example of someone pointing out that games are bad and sneaking in his hate of LGBTQ people into the videos.
We need to have an effort to critique and point out the real problems in why games are bad and AAA companies are making bad games, while also pointing out bad, biased, and hateful criticism that pushes a bigoted agenda.