Developers & Reviewers who follow me:

We need to have a conversation about the kind of audience CDPR has intentionally been courting and cultivating, all through their media push for CP2077, but particularly since they started flirting with "edgy" fetishization of trans bodies.

I just received this message of harassment, and I want you to know, it is ordinary in nearly every way. In content, in tone, in obvious desire to inflict emotional harm, it is exactly like the several hundred other messages I have gotten since I began talking about CP2077.

It's from a purpose-made harassment account that follows no one, has no or few followers. It was made just for this purpose, as most of them were. No, the only noteworthy thing about it, to me, is what it's replying to, this time.

This time, it was responding to this thread, where I talk about how positive and welcoming it has been to me to see trans voices intentionally uplifted to talk about Cyberpunk 2077. https://twitter.com/quatoria/status/1336348838597103616

And it struck me how well this illustrates the specific harm that is being done when a publisher like CDPR is able to intentionally court this audience without seeing any major pushback, without facing any significant criticism or interruption of their hype for their bad actions.

I am specifically talking to the cis game dev and cis game journalists and critics who follow me here: when you do not talk about this, or uplift trans voices to talk about it, this coarsening of the hobbyist space and increasing hostility to trans voices is the consequence.

Since I began talking about this game in 2019, I have been featured in two different attack videos, have had hundreds of hostile and overtly transphobic attack messages sent at me. This is the cost yr asking trans people to bear when we must talk about this alone, unsupported.

I have yet to see a single cis voice in game criticism or game development suggest that CDPR's "edgy" fetishism of trans bodies in their advertising or their intentional recruitment of those harassing elements prevent you from purchasing their product. Even that low bar.