Dcubed Posted February 27, 2019 Posted February 27, 2019 (edited) So... yeah... This happened! This guy provided a nice summary of events, so I'm just gonna lovingly steal quote his work here... Quote Summary of the topic up to now. To provide background as to 8chan. 8chan as an anonymous message board modeled on 4chan, but meant to be less restrictive than 4chan. As 4chan already restricts very little, in practice what this means is that 8chan is a 4chan clone with a focus on child pornography / pedophilic content. Spoiler From Wikipedia: Additionally, 8chan has a large Neo-Nazi presence, and was the host to Gamergate supporters after 4chan banned them. Blatant anti-semitic, misogynist, and racist posts are extremely common. Additionally, things like doxxing and swatting; the list just goes on. Because of this, Google has removed 8chan from its search listings. Instead of finding the website, your search results will result in sites like Wikipedia that just tell you what the website is. This is important to note, as if someone interacts with the website, it raises the question of how they even found it in the first place. THQ's official twitter announces that they're performing an AMA on 8chan's gaming board, /v/: THQ also notes that they were approached by the gaming board's owner, a Mark (the identity has been guessed at being Mark Kern of Red 5 Studios, a noted Gamergate supporter, but I don't think it's been definitely proven). Cue The Room jokes. Mark promises to handle the "nasty stuff", which presumably suggests that THQ is aware of the risk of posting on a child pornography supporting message board and wants to avoid legal risks or something along those lines. At any rate, them acknowledging "nasty stuff" tells us that they know it's a possibility here. Getting a little ahead of ourselves, but they also like a tweet calling criticisms against the AMA on 8chan - again, a site largely defined by its attitute to child pornography - as "sensitive", suggesting a flippant attitude to the whole situation. We can see a similar attitude expressed in the Linkedin of their PR and Marketing Director, Philipp Brock. After speculation that maybe this was a hack or a fake, a journalist at PC Games Insider reaches out and confirms that this actually is THQ Nordic. Some comments from Imran (news editor at Game Informer). Looking at the activity within the AMA itself. But before you even get to the thread, you have to go to /v/, which was currently advertising a board devoted to pictures (perhaps illustrated) of children at the top of the page. Note that "shotacon" refers to attraction to young boys while "lolicon" refers to attraction to young girls, and "shota" and "loli" to the children themselves. This would be seen both when posting the thread and going to reply to it. Spoiler Note that while 8chan is an anonymous message board and any user can put in any name, there are ways to identify users. I believe IDs are generated on a thread by thread basis and mapped to a certain IP address, but I confess I don't know the specifics of it. In this case, we can see that all of THQ's users are given an ID of 159bc1, which identifies their posts as coming from the same place regardless of what name they put in, perhaps a single company IP being subnetted to multiple users. Additionally, they are given a ## Reporter tag by the board's manager to confirm their official status. One THQ Nordic name we see is Philipp, the aforementioned PR and marketing director, Philipp Brock. We can see Philipp assuring an 8chan user that the company will not appeal to social justice. He does not have the ## Reporter tag here, but he does have the 159bc1 ID. Another post where Philipp tells the user that they've already got "big tiddie lolis" - again, underage girls. Here we have both the 159bc1 ID and the ## Reporter tag. Spoiler Here Philipp makes a joke. No ## Reporter tag, but he does have the 159bc1 ID. Another THQ Nordic name involved is Reinhard. Here we have Reinhard ignoring slurs posted in the AMA. Both the ## Reporter tag and the 159bc1 ID are present. Spoiler Reinhard also responds to a homophobic post saying that the image might be from one of their games. Again, the ## Reporter tag and the 159bc1 ID are both present. Spoiler Reinhard appears to be Reinhard Pollice, Business & Product Development Director at THQ Nordic. Bear in mind that we're now dealing with a major player within the company, not just someone low on the PR rung. http://www.thqnordic-investors.com/en/board-and-management/ When reached to for a response, Reinhard puts the blame on Philipp. Another member of THQ Nordic is Fabian. His identity is not confirmed. However, he does have the ## Reporter tag and the same 159bc1 ID. In another post, he says that he has no idea why they picked 8chan as the venue. Again, he has both the ## Reporter tag and the 159bc1 ID. Meanwhile, 8channers are whining about ResetEra, because what else would a forum with a big Gamergate continigent do. Other questions contain the sort of content (racism, nazi imagery, etc.) that is expected from this website. Spoiler Philipp ultimately provides an apology. Note that the contents of the apology claim that the issue was due to lack of due diligence and understanding. Also remember that this is a website that is unlisted by Google, that they had spoken the board owner previously and specifically on the topic of "nasty stuff", that they had clearly seen questionable content during the AMA itself, and that they had liked a tweet that claimed that critics of the AMA were just sensitive. The claim made in the apology doesn't match the evidence. In an interview, Philipp claims that he continued the AMA despite the offensive content because he was overwhelmed. In another, he defends one of replies in the AMA. Waypoint reached out to the CEO of THQ Nordic who declined to comment, instead referring to Philipp's apology. Waypoint also reached out to THQ Nordic's actual developers, who are upset at being tied to this marketing attempt. The story is picked up by various websites. This includes gaming websites (Gamesindustry.biz, Waypoint, Gamasutra) but also more general publications like (Newsweek, Variety) https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-02-26-thq-nordic-holding-ama-on-imageboard-known-for-child-porn https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/article/59xk5z/thq-nordic-held-qanda-on-a-website-banned-for-suspected-child-pornography http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/337513/THQ_Nordic_inexplicably_hosts_AMA_in_a_notorious_internet_cesspool.php https://www.newsweek.com/thq-nordic-ama-8chan-games-twitter-mark-1345068 https://variety.com/2019/gaming/news/thq-nordic-holds-ama-on-8chan-1203150074/ How the hell does this even happen!? How could anyone in their right mind approve of doing this as a moderately large publisher and a publicly listed company!? How utterly brazenly stupid do you have to be!? Surely you could only think of doing this if you actually believed in this ultra right-wing garbage!? Edited February 27, 2019 by Dcubed
Glen-i Posted February 27, 2019 Posted February 27, 2019 Man, that was a... Well, it was a something, that's for sure. I'm trying to get my head around how there wasn't anyone who spoke out and said, "Wait hang on, is this really a good idea?" They're either dangerously ignorant or dangerously right wing. 1
Recommended Posts