'Anyone Who Doesn't Include Five Trans Characters...': Ori Studio CEO Defends Closure Comments

a year ago by inclementimmigrant to c/pcgaming

Mahler caught wind of the article and responded to it on social media, going on a rant against ‘the press’ and those who hate against him and his brand on social media because of past events and opinions.

He slipped a bit, making some inflammatory comments:

I’ve been hated on Twitter by a few crazies for years now, and I also saw the calls for review bombing because, according to those folks, I’m a ‘Nazi.’

These days, apparently anyone who doesn’t include five trans characters in their game and doesn’t let their products be influenced by political bullshit is a Nazi. What a world we live in.

When the Russia/Ukraine war broke out and I replied on Twitter saying that Moon Studios wouldn’t be taking a public stance—because we’re a video game company, not a journalistic outlet—the next day a threat letter with a picture of Putin was taped to my office door, full of insults from top to bottom.

Well that went from whiney to a bigoted WTF tangent in zero seconds flat.

nullpotential 92 points a year ago

Yes it's because you don't put five trans characters in games. Not because you complain about wokeness and cancel culture in a way that is not so much a dog whistle as it is a fucking foghorn of rightwing nutjobbery.

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Duamerthrax 2 points a year ago

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ZeroHora 14 points a year ago

when the game was based on medieval Poland.

The Witcher universe has dark skin people, CD Projekt choose to not include them in the base game, you have some in the Hearts of Stone DLC.

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EightBitBlood 5 points a year ago

They didn't include much race variation in the base game because doing so would require additional modeling and texturing for NPCs that would behave identically. For an indie studio, adding new characters, even NPCs, is costly to time and budget, so that work doesn't happen unless there's a need for that specific NPC to be that color.

This is why there's so little representation in older games. That shit used to be way more expensive to make happen.

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SolOrion 27 points a year ago

The game is mostly positive? If it's getting review bombed, then it isn't a very effective review bombing.

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inclementimmigrant 52 points a year ago

From what I can tell they recently got a few negatives that put them into "mixed" briefly because players were critical about QoL features, difficulty and whatnot, seemingly pretty valid types of reviews.

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Glide 33 points a year ago

"Everyone who is critical of me is woke."

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rickyrigatoni 3 points a year ago

Is he purposefully trying to get the comoany shuttered for tax reasons? Maybe he owes a lot and wants to declare bankruptcy?

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celeste 25 points a year ago

Is this all a weird ad for his game, to get eyes on it, or is he just like this?

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Agent_Karyo 9 points a year ago

Honestly this sounds like a guerilla marketing campaign of sorts.

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StarlightDust 15 points a year ago

Imagine making a Souls-like and then spending all your time complaining about the tr*nnies. Pathetic bastard. What a way to eliminate half your audience. That said, I'm more of a New Vegas girlie myself so it's not like I'd ever buy it.

Go anti-woke go broke

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AwesomeLowlander 0 points a year ago

What's the connection between souls-like and trannies?

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rickyrigatoni 4 points a year ago

Dark Souls 2 had the gender change coffin.

I don't know what OP was going for but that came to mind.

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skulblaka 2 points a year ago

Gwyndolin in Dark Souls 1 is a semi major lore character and is trans(?)

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StarlightDust 1 point a year ago

Just in case you didn't know, if you are cis then you shouldn't be saying tranny (otherwise ignore me). I thought I should reiterate that since I said it without making it particular clear.

This reddit thread on /r/TransSouls seems to cover the different reasons. (Alternative Front End) I'm not into it myself so I can't really say.

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overload 13 points a year ago

Urgh, I really like the Ori games and was looking forward to the new one once it came out of early access. Not anymore unfortunately. I don't even care about representation in games, but this is just blatant transphobia.

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ILikeBoobies 12 points a year ago

Hmm office door would imply it was an internal grievance

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IvanOverdrive 3 points a year ago

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yoriaiko 11 points a year ago

Oh thats some more info of this drama that I didn't knew... unsihlisted.

Thx for the news.

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Sunshine 4 points a year ago

Looks like Ori has been added to the boycott list.

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RizzRustbolt 1 point a year ago

We've been sayin'...

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dragonfucker -4 points a year ago

Wow fuck that guy. Drag is going to think about how to get Will of the Wisps refunded

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kugmo -68 points a year ago

Buying their game and gifting 10 copies of it now.

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DtA 14 points a year ago

Why announce to the world that you are a cunt?

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Sunshine 5 points a year ago

Checks modlog, sees perma banned from blahaj.zone...

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dragonfucker -12 points a year ago

Can drag please have a copy?

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inclementimmigrant 1 point a year ago

Did you ever get a copy?

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dragonfucker 0 points a year ago

No. Can't tell if the transphobe is unwilling to give stuff to a trans person, or if it was just hot air the whole time. Either way, transphobes are losers

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inclementimmigrant 1 point a year ago

Shame to not see some good come from this.

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