Sexist Game or Sandbox?

[Cloud_Strife]

Remove Kebab is a meme that refers to the Serbian genocide of Muslim Bosniaks, that's why it was written on the gun of the alt righter that shot 50+ people to suffer a th I your own country.

Maybe that fact should have clued you in to its context but apparently not because we've had this conversation before and you continue to misrepresent what it is and I'm beginning to think it might not be a coincidence.

 

[Zardnaar]

Remove Kebab is a meme that refers to the Serbian genocide of Muslim Bosniaks, that's why it was written on the gun of the alt righter that shot 50+ people to suffer a th I your own country.

Maybe that fact should have clued you in to its context but apparently not because we've had this conversation before and you continue to misrepresent what it is and I'm beginning to think it might not be a coincidence.

I know but I was playing EUIV when they banned it, and had 20-30 players online.

Never heard anyone use it in the context you described. Not saying it didn't happen and when they banned it people still used Kebab on teamspeak or whatever.

It was always a reference to Ottomans. How well Ottomans did was always based on the player involved not because someone played them.

Aggressive ottoman players tended to get gangbanged, most powerful nation and all that.

 

[Arakhor]

The whole Deus Vult thing has been called a miscommunication, but Paradox "fans" still took it upon themselves to be idiots and review-bomb the Steam store page. Quite why you can change a Steam rating months or years later is anyone's business, though why Steam reviews are not highly regarded is quite obvious.

 

[Cloud_Strife]

The meme predates eu3 and eu4.

 

[Yeekim]

Remove Kebab is a meme that refers to the Serbian genocide of Muslim Bosniaks

TIL.

 

[Cloud_Strife]

@Zardnaar I must confess that i don't actually care much for your attempts to downplay a meme that is a racist dog whistle that calls for the genocide of mainly muslim ethnic minorities.

The context of its use in gaming circles does not change what it means and calls for nor justify it's usage especially not after someone has learnt of the actual meaning behind the meme.

It is the same as joking about rounding up Jews or roma to slaughter or PoC to lynch and it's disgusting and any right minded person would acknowledge it for what it is. The above two would be banned by paradox so it stands that the meme should be as well.

 

[Zardnaar]

@Zardnaar I must confess that i don't actually care much for your attempts to downplay a meme that is a racist dog whistle that calls for the genocide of mainly muslim ethnic minorities.

The context of its use in gaming circles does not change what it means and calls for nor justify it's usage especially not after someone has learnt of the actual meaning behind the meme.

It is the same as joking about rounding up Jews or roma to slaughter or PoC to lynch and it's disgusting and any right minded person would acknowledge it for what it is. The above two would be banned by paradox so it stands that the meme should be as well.

Doesn't bother me they banned it, I never saw it used in remove kebab context and I never saw the meme.

Kebab kept being used on team speak, the two Turks we played with used the term and kebab got used on the forums.

People would list 5 countries to play eg

France
Kebab
Pope
Muscovy
Portugal

From memory they banned the word kebab which by default bans the term remove kebab.

I also never saw it in the shooters video it was illegal to show it here on the news so foreigners probably saw more of it on the news. It breached the obscene materials act so the video wasn't shown and it's illegal to download (they didn't bother trying to charge anyone who saw it).

On March 15 a young fella put the livestream on at work and I told him to turn that crap off so only saw maybe 10 seconds of it and never saw any writing on the gun.

 

[Cloud_Strife]

https://www.rferl.org/a/christchurc...inspiration-suspect-new-zealand/29823655.html

This is a reported fact that he took inspiration from the meme in question as well as having said meme on his gun.

This is literally genocide advocating and glorifying in meme form and the end result is people like the shooter.

 

[Zardnaar]

https://www.rferl.org/a/christchurc...inspiration-suspect-new-zealand/29823655.html

This is a reported fact that he took inspiration from the meme in question as well as having said meme on his gun.

This is literally genocide advocating and glorifying in meme form and the end result is people like the shooter.

Never denied it I said I never saw it and at the time Paradox banned the term afaik they banned the word kebab on the forums.

It's their forums their rules so I have no issue with them banning it. Every started using it so it was obvious and they banned it.

 

[Cloud_Strife]

So given that you acknowledge that genocidal memes are ban worthy do you not extend that to "Deus Vult" which is also a call to genocide?

 

[Zardnaar]

So given that you acknowledge that genocidal memes are ban worthy do you not extend that to "Deus Vult" which is also a call to genocide?

It's Latin for God wills it. IDK the details of it I think the game will still have it but they're not going to use it in advertising.

Terrorists use Allahu Akbar so I think context is important.

If they think it's a bad idea so be it.

I don't think I'll be buying CKIII on release either way.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Censoring a historical phrase is stupid. Making a huge fuss about it, like the morons who whine about it, threaten to boycott Paradox and review bomb CK2 on Steam, is stupid on power three.
I'll bet dollars to peanuts that if Pdox had just dropped it quietly, or just translated it to English, no-one would have even noticed. It's... what, present in 1-2 event localisations? Hardly a critical part of game experience.

True. Though I've not purchased any of their new games for much more direct, mechanical reasons. That + they love UIs that lie to players w/o patching it for 3+ years in multiple ways.

CK2 is the best in that regard, out of the current titles. But quality of their last 3 titles has been very questionable, so it's hard to get excited for CK3 regardless of the small stupid move wrt deus vult.

Good to see them doing something about a phrase adopted as a dogwhistle by the alt right, I notice they that paradox already banned the phrase "remove kebab" which is also a dogwhistle with genocidal and anti Islamic undertones not to mention most likely racist

If everything is a dogwhistle, nothing is.

I have no respect for the alt right. I also have no respect for empowering the alt right by constraining my own or majority behavior based on them.

Either deus vult is a historical term "God wills it" and the alt right has no real bearing on it, or Barack Obama is a white supremacist who signals with racist alt right dogwhistles. Pick one. If you can't pick one, you also can't have a valid opinion on this matter.

though why Steam reviews are not highly regarded is quite obvious.

Top rated Steam comments/reviews are much more predictive of game quality and honest than nearly the entirety of the game "journalism" industry. There is a lot of trash to filter, but at least Steam has a feature to filter it and those reviews are free + by people who know how to play the game.

 

[Kyriakos]

Remove Kebab is a meme that refers to the Serbian genocide of Muslim Bosniaks,

While technically (???) it might originate from that, it should go without saying that the phrase isn't by majority used to refer to Serbia or that war. It is used generically about christian-muslim wars, often about the ottoman empire but (AFAIK) not just muslims in the balkans. With Paradox it would obviously be all over the place in those nice Siege of Vienna threads

Tbh, Serbia suffered genocide of its own people in the yugoslav wars too, so it may not be a good idea to single it out. There was the genocide by Croatia, under Tudman.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Also doesn't help that Ottomans are among the most hated empires in EU 4 for a few reasons:

• Many Rome-a-boos love trying to resurrect Byzantium. While there are harder things in EU 4, this is very challenging and puts Ottomans in your face immediately. Source of much beginner-to-intermediate player frustration.
• Ottomans are juiced with ridiculous missions, "national ideas" (themselves a questionable concept), "European status" (which means much more than it should in the game for years now), to the point that they are among the easiest nations you can pick for world conquest.
• Those same missions + poor AI interactions with mechanics means you must be heavily spoiled with hidden mechanics to prevent them turning on you due to by-design and/or bugged interactions, even if you're allied.
• Their tech group gives them strong units early, and their generals are initially biased to the point of being ridiculous (some of the greatest tactical minds in history allegedly), so you can't win pitched battles in the critical early game.

As such "removing" them took on context far beyond the origins of the term. They are deliberately and selectively overpowered relative to history and are a massive pain unless you're a very experienced player. France, before it was kneecapped a bit, was similarly often called "baguette" or the "big blue blob" (even receiving an achievement by the name). Before the power creep French military was almost unmatched in EU 4, with only the ridiculous Prussians being consistently stronger. And of course Ottomans.

What makes this worse is that both nations (and all nations in EU 4) ignore historical context. So even if Portugal has conquered all of Iberia, Maghreb, and France while seeing war for 200 years constantly, they will still have "Portuguese ideas" and their armies will still be *much* weaker than Ottoman or Prussian armies with the same idea groups, even if the latter has barely engaged in conflict whatsoever.

~~~

On a side note, Abbasids in CK2 also rarely break apart without a concerted effort from the player, further empowering "deus vult" as something directly related to putting down one of the single greatest obstacles in the game. But now it's supposedly a "dogwhistle". Yeah, gonna "nope" that one.

 

[Synobun]

Both things can be true.

 

[Lexicus]

Yeah, gonna "nope" that one.

I've seen literal fascists (like, literal members of groups like Identity Evropa) post Deus Vult memes as fascist propaganda, so I'm gonna nope this

 

[Zardnaar]

I've seen literal fascists (like, literal members of groups like Identity Evropa) post Deus Vult memes as fascist propaganda, so I'm gonna nope this

Groups like that ruin everything. Deus Vult isn't integral to the game IMHO.

 

[Kyriakos]

I've seen literal fascists (like, literal members of groups like Identity Evropa) post Deus Vult memes as fascist propaganda, so I'm gonna nope this

While I have no beef with this one (I am sure you didn't expect me to defend Paradox ), that is like saying that anyone who uses the "Molon Lave" (come and take them/it) meme has to be fascist. Historically it was just a phrase uttered by the Spartans at Thermopylae.

 

[Zardnaar]

Also doesn't help that Ottomans are among the most hated empires in EU 4 for a few reasons:

• Many Rome-a-boos love trying to resurrect Byzantium. While there are harder things in EU 4, this is very challenging and puts Ottomans in your face immediately. Source of much beginner-to-intermediate player frustration.
• Ottomans are juiced with ridiculous missions, "national ideas" (themselves a questionable concept), "European status" (which means much more than it should in the game for years now), to the point that they are among the easiest nations you can pick for world conquest.
• Those same missions + poor AI interactions with mechanics means you must be heavily spoiled with hidden mechanics to prevent them turning on you due to by-design and/or bugged interactions, even if you're allied.
• Their tech group gives them strong units early, and their generals are initially biased to the point of being ridiculous (some of the greatest tactical minds in history allegedly), so you can't win pitched battles in the critical early game.

As such "removing" them took on context far beyond the origins of the term. They are deliberately and selectively overpowered relative to history and are a massive pain unless you're a very experienced player. France, before it was kneecapped a bit, was similarly often called "baguette" or the "big blue blob" (even receiving an achievement by the name). Before the power creep French military was almost unmatched in EU 4, with only the ridiculous Prussians being consistently stronger. And of course Ottomans.

What makes this worse is that both nations (and all nations in EU 4) ignore historical context. So even if Portugal has conquered all of Iberia, Maghreb, and France while seeing war for 200 years constantly, they will still have "Portuguese ideas" and their armies will still be *much* weaker than Ottoman or Prussian armies with the same idea groups, even if the latter has barely engaged in conflict whatsoever.

~~~

On a side note, Abbasids in CK2 also rarely break apart without a concerted effort from the player, further empowering "deus vult" as something directly related to putting down one of the single greatest obstacles in the game. But now it's supposedly a "dogwhistle". Yeah, gonna "nope" that one.

They nerfed the Ottomans. You used to be able to consume the namluks very fast and you had free cores through Anatolia.

 

[AmazonQueen]

While I have no beef with this one (I am sure you didn't expect me to defend Paradox ), that is like saying that anyone who uses the "Molon Lave" (come and take them/it) meme has to be fascist. Historically it was just a phrase uttered by the Spartans at Thermopylae.

At a certain point though a symbol or phrase can be so associated with a particular cause or group that effectively its original meaning is lost like the swastika.
That hasn't happened with Deus Vult for me although our Fascists are probably not literate enough and are too xenophobic so most of them tend to stick with misusing the Union Flag.