Oh Godot….Why you do this!?

As I’ve covered before, Godot is a free to use, 2D & 3D open-sourced engine created for game developers. Recently they’ve been making the headlines, but for all the wrong reasons.

In the past month, The Godot Foundation board has seemingly decided to brand themselves as a “woke” company, which has led to considerable backlash. It all started on Sept 27^th, 2024 when The Godot Foundation tweeted out a post insinuating that they saw themselves as a woke company, something which they felt should be celebrated. They encouraged fellow woke users to share their woke games in the comments section. Unfortunately for The Godot Foundation, they’d vastly underestimated just how unpopular “woke” culture has become nowadays, with people from all walks of life and political leanings speaking out against the perceived ham-fisted nature with which some DEI elements are being inserted into modern media.

Many game developers, weary of DEI and “woke” agendas who were using Godot, felt betrayed and blindsided that The Godot Foundation was seemingly taking sides on what was to them a political issue. Moreover, they pointed out the various bugs that were currently running rampant on the engine and felt that focus should have been placed on fixing these known issues instead. As a result, while some individuals did show support for the company’s statement, there nonetheless was a rather large pushback among many users to their stance. As The Godot Foundation later began to hide replies, the pushback only worsened, with some users feeling their voices were being silenced. X (formerly known as Twitter) users began reaching out to any staff members linked to the game engine, airing their grievances, even off-platform. This continued to escalate, eventually leading to a mass blocking spree by moderators of the company’s various social media platforms.

He said WHAT?

The situation was worsened by the bad behavior of individuals who held privileged positions across various company social media platforms. Individuals that were perceived by many (as a result of their privileged status’) to be acting as representatives of the company.

Many such individuals decided to lash out at those who were pushing back on the company’s new stance, in an explosive manner. One such individual was xananax, a moderator for the company over on Discord. He unleashed a barrage of expletive-laden insults, which only made the company look hostile to anyone who had taken umbrage (regardless of the reason) to their released “woke” statement on X (formerly known as Twitter).

You can find exactly what was said by xananax below:

“You have no right of speech here, because I consider your speech to be toxic vomit. If you think inviting queer people to share their games is “politics,” you’re a toxic piece of fuck, an evil human, and I want you to feel disrespected. And to fuck off as fast as you can.

“The drama isn’t created by Godot, who just made a nice tweet to surface indie games. The drama is created by reactionary insecure cowards, who have nothing better to do in their day than to shit on something they are unconcerned with. They even feel “persecuted” because other people…exist and are visible.

“These people’s cowardice and small mindedness is a danger to everyone; They’re the filth of humanity, and banning them is a kindness to everyone, including themselves; that way, they can continue to pretend the world is made only of cowards like them and not be subjected to people that are different.

“For me, the only problem of this tweet is that it doesn’t happen every day, so more of these imbeciles can be banned. They should be doing these tweets every 30mn, and anyone who has a problem with them can fuck off to oblivion, and then fuck off some more. And anyone having some slight issue with it here can fuck off too.

“To not have mode drama, it’s very easy: There will be no more drama the day those drama queens stop getting their panties in a knot around anything that doesn’t concern them. See something that doesn’t concern you in any way? Just do your best to be a normal human being about it, and there will be no drama.”

Oh no you didn’t!

As you can see above, xananax went on quite the tirade. And when The Godot Foundation put out a new tweet a few days after the original, they attempted to strongly distance themselves from this individual, pointing out he was not directly hired by them, nor should he be considered any kind of spokesman for their company. They also vowed to provide further vetting for future volunteer moderator roles in their Discord server.

They did however also condemn the “abuse” that their staff members and community had received in response to the initial tweet. They offered those who had been blocked a chance to appeal and made clear that their community spaces would be kept free from hate, discrimination, and curiously “other toxic behaviors” (the same type of language used by xananax, who they’d simultaneously just disavowed).

While it would appear on the surface that those who run Godot do not agree with the views of xananax, it is curious they chose to use similar language when talking about those who had pushed back on the original tweet. This implies that although publicly they may disavow xananax, behind closed doors they may actually agree with him.

Most illogical

There are several issues with xananax’s views….

Like is all too often the case with such backlash, legitimate grievances or concerns are ignored in favor of reframing the events that are unfolding to create a new, false narrative of victimhood. Now, that’s not to say there probably weren’t some individuals who did take things too far, as there will always unfortunately be a few who do. But, xananax and Godot themselves both fail to acknowledge there could also be some legitimate criticism or concerns people had with the original tweet.

As I’ve previously established in articles around Sweet Baby Inc. several industry giants are starting to shift away from DEI. DEI has become extremely unpopular among mainstream customers, as has “woke” culture in general. Therefore when Godot positions themselves as a “woke” company (even in jest), this will have a direct impact on potential sales for developers using the engine. So, from a purely business-oriented position, it makes sense that some developers would feel concerned, and even alarmed about the company taking such a definitive stance on such a divisive issue.

Xananax repeatedly refers to those who pushed back on the tweet as “cowards” who do not wish to be subjected to people who are different.” But such commentators never wish to hear a diverse range of opinions. For them, you either agree with them wholeheartedly, or you are the enemy. It’s interesting therefore that they fail to see their own hypocrisy. He even mentions his disdain for anyone who offers even “the slightest” pushback to the original tweet. Rather than taking people as individuals, and assessing their arguments for individual merit, they instead take everyone who doesn’t agree with their stance and label them with the most extreme of labels, in a bid to ostracize them from the conversation. Very rarely will such commentators be open to debate, because it’s far simpler to merely argue against the individual as a person, rather than the specific points they’re making. Their thinking is that if they can show the individual pushing back on their ideas is a flawed one, then any points they make must also be flawed, and thus they as a person (including their ideas) should be ignored. This is the type of thinking that leads to dictatorships. It’s vitally important that a diverse range of opinions are heard and that people are debated on their specific points, not who they are as individuals.

As also mentioned previously, xananax’s statement was laden with expletives. Communicating in such an unarticulated fashion will only lead to further pushback. It implies that the individual arguing from this position is doing so on the basis of emotion, rather than logic. That they’re unwilling to engage in actual debate and only wish to seek validation for their own strongly held beliefs. Moreover, as a representative (official, or otherwise) of a company, you should not be lashing out at your customer base. This is just terrible business, as most likely such a tirade caused many to leave the engine and take their business elsewhere, including outside witnesses to the situation who won’t have appreciated xananax’s vulgarity.

Ultimately, Godot’s original tweet was not a well though out idea. While there is nothing wrong with them celebrating the diversity of their developers, the way in which they chose to go about it only caused division and ultimately cost them business. There was no need for them to mention the word “woke” in their tweet. This essentially poked the bear, as many have come to associate this word with forced DEI and agenda driven decisions, which lead to creativity being strangled. If you were cynical, you might even suggest they did this on purpose, knowing they’d face backlash, falsely believing that the added attention this would bring on their engine would somehow result in an increase in usage. While xananax was right that no reasonable person would have an issue with diversity in and of itself, the issue is how companies are going about promoting and incorporating this into their products.

The reason there’s so much pushback to DEI and “wokeness,” for the most part isn’t a hatred against folks who are different, or a desire for sameness. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. The fact is that in previous generations there was an incredible breadth of diversity in the entertainment business, and many successful shows and films who had diverse leads. However, creativity came first, and that’s why those shows succeeded. Sometimes there were messages, but the messages were relatable and had genuine heart. Nowadays, everything is starting to just feel the same. DEI has become forced and feels ham-fisted. As a result, characters don’t feel three-dimensional anymore and as such can’t be seen as relatable. The importance is placed on the inclusion of the message and no longer on how it’s implemented. As a result, people are more commonly associating DEI with ham-fistedness and a lack of genuine creativity. This sets up a project to fail before it’s even begun. The result is that DEI practices are in reality actually creating more division than they’re resolving. The industry needs to listen and hear the feedback from their customers. By doing so, they can change direction. Still having a message of acceptance and celebration of diversity, but in a way that people can once again get onboard with.

The Crux of the Matter

Ultimately, it comes down to this very simple fact. If you force things in a ham-fisted way and the product fails, you’ve helped no one from your community. There’s no returning for sequels. No demand for more entertainment set in that universe. You’ve killed all the potential there was for your idea to become a hit and actually reach people and possibly even change some hearts and minds. But, if you focus on making a good product, with genuine creativity (that just so happens to have diverse elements in there), people will celebrate it. It will get a sequel, etc. It will reach more hearts and minds as a result. You will actually help people from your community. It’s just frustrating how it feels that DEI in its current form/”wokeness” has set these projects up to fail, almost in an attempt to throw their hands up in the air and say, “See, see, people are just bigots.” Again, some of the most successful franchises in the 90s were diverse. General audiences never had an issue with diversity, before it became ham-fisted!

Listen and learn!

Or be doomed to continue to repeat the same mistakes, again, and again, and again!