Steam User Finds Misogynistic "Joke" Buried in Dead Island Code [UPDATED]

[Bios06]

we as a community should stop with sexism already.
Feminism is just silly, its segregating.
And like yahtzee said ' It's very depressing when you can't make honest cultural commentary without having to disavow the assumption that your feelings are motivated by an irrational hate-trigger response to different levels of melanin. You know what? A society where anyone can make jokes about anyone else and everyone laughs is a truly tolerant society. Political correctness-charged censorship only serves to engender resentment and distance between social groups. Besides gangster rappers don't need defending ? they've got guns for that!'

It still applies to this.

I still think that piece of code was just a joke. so no need to over react.

Cheers to you sir, for quoting yahtzee, and cheers to him for having some clarity in this lovely time of flying bullsh*t.

I like how the major complaint about this is what the perk is called and now how it acts, since, as previously pointed out ad nauseum, the same exact perk exists in Fallout. It's good to know that we're more concerned with the naming of things rather than their actual functions. Also, I like how people are totally cool with the fact that fallout did it and flip a ***** over this game, since this game only had a female character who could get a bonus to damage to men, and not a male counterpart with a similar skill. It's good to know we're all secure enough to handle that....

You want some REAL EQUALITY? Learn to laugh at both sexes equally and don't get your panties in a twist over the name of a perk in video game.

 

[goathax]

Depriving me? What? Did I say anything along those lines?

That's my point. You're not being deprived of anything, so your choice to get all "circle the wagons" about suggests bad things. You have nothing at all to gain by defending some random jerkass who can't make it 9-to-5 without saying things that would get most people in trouble at work. If you have nothing to gain or protect, it starts to look really suspect -- like you think calling people "feminist whore" is something worth fighting for.

I think people get upset and offended all the time over things they could just brush off because they weren't even a personal attack on the people who were offended. It wasn't 100% just for this situation.

But it's not that simple. If a game had a black character who was unsympathetic and a coder referred to him using the n-word, that does more than just sit there hidden in the code. It says something about the person who made it. It says they think it's appropriate to treat other human beings like that. And when other people choose to defend it, it says they approve of it. If I don't like a woman, my choice not to call her a whore has nothing to do with what I think of her as a person and everything to do with my understanding that whatever is wrong with her is not a product of her sex or of how well she adheres to gender roles. Techland's rogue coder and anyone else who resorts to gendered slurs doesn't seem to get that.

You disagree with me? Are you offended by this obvious joke?

If I got up in arms every time some knuckledragger said stupid crap about feminism because he didn't understand it, I wouldn't be able to use the internet or play video games. What does bother me is how the moment people pointed this out, a whole hell of a lot of people start straw-manning the hell out of the entire feminist movement or leaping to the defense of something that deserves no defense.

It's not the most awful thing anyone's ever done, but it's also unambiguously shitty to do and it makes no sense that people would defend it.

 

[w1ndscar]

I bet if it said something against men on a male character, like "pig", nobody would say a thing about it being bad.

But of course. Thats how things work. Women want to be equal, but they cant take the heat they try to equally dish men. Just like someone who happens to be a different color can make white jokes all day long, but if a white guy makes a colored joke its immediately racist and hes in huge trouble.

 

[Kenji_03]

Their professional reply is good enough for me.

 

[chadachada123]

I don't get it. Why is this bad?

A feminist can be a total whore, or *****, or whatever else they want to be. This is not the case of something calling all feminists - or even a certain group of feminists - whores, but... really, not even calling -A- feminist a whore. It's like putting LazyCouchFratBoy in your code as a skill. It's hardly an insult, and NOT directed at anyone at all. It's saying nothing. It's not a joke. It's not funny. It's not hurtful. There's nothing to apologize over!

This. I don't see how this programmer is sexist just because he used some terms that mentioned gender, or gender-specific derogatory terms. The programmer could very well be female but put it in because she was feeling creative about her descriptors that day.

 

[Retardinator]

What's the big deal? It's a piece of code never meant to be seen by anybody.

I know I do such things the whole time when coding. I had friend who declared his variables in C++ class as M,I,L and F. Even the professor got a chuckle out of it.
It's definitely not meant to be serious.

 

[OldRat]

NOTE, THERE WILL BE A SPOILER FOR BALDUR'S GATE 2 HERE.

Dunno why, but this just isn't doing anything for me. I know it's petty and tasteless, but for some reason I just can't get worked up I guess it's just the fact this is so... eh.

Although, if the character really does hate men enough that she can harness some sort of an inner rage of extra-gory murder mayhem just at the sight of one, I'd say it's not completely without merit to call her mean names for it. Yeah, it's still petty and crude, but nyeh, I just dunno.

On a sidenote, this reminds me, somewhat, of Baldur's Gate 2 and the global variable that had to do with Yoshimo betraying the party. Turns out the coder really didn't appreciate the man's assholity either, and so, you can find, to this day, a global variable named "ButtPluggingCumBubble" if you look hard enough. I guess this is just something coders do, apparently.

 

[Nouw]

If it was a joke, what's to get all uppity about?

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

wow, I'm amazed at the amount of people who got suspended/warned for sexist remarks in the first page alone. Goddamn, between this and the Deus Ex controversy gamers aren't really making themselves sympathetic, are they?

 

[SacremPyrobolum]

I'm amazed this guy was able to find that one line of code out of the millions of lines in the game!

 

[Shamanic Rhythm]

And what if he was being serious? Feminists are unreasonable creatures. So unreasonable they surpassed PETA a long time ago. They deserve all the hate they get.

Because 'Feminist Whore' is kind of an oxymoron. It shows more that whoever programmed it was just throwing together misogynist adjectives without stopping to think. It reminds me of the time a certain kid at my school described our housemaster as a 'Jewish Nazi'... I think that's one of the only times the phrase 'epic fail' really is applicable.

Or perhaps he did stop to think and intentionally made it an oxymoron, this whole thing isn't even worth the time any of us put into posting about it, especially since there is no context.

Techland's response was extremely political, I highly doubt the person who wrote it even gave a shit.

Maxing an insult oxymoronical doesn't invalidate the insult; it just shows that not only are you rude, you're stupid too.

Sure, I doubt he seriously means anything by it. But it doesn't imply you have very professional standards as a company if you can release a product with this kind of coding joke still embedded there for all to see, and that's why he's being punished. It's not that (speaking for myself) the joke is really offensive so much as 'what were they thinking?'/

 

[Strazdas]

i think the biger problem is that the company has failed to release the correct version and not about some programmer inner joke in debug. i have created enough in-house jokes in my time (not about feminists though, i never really cared about them).
on the other hand, the game is really good.

 

[De Ronneman]

I can see that it's inapropriate, it's wrong and shouldn't have been in the game.

But please, everyone who is screaming for blood: don't you recall a moment where you made an inaproriate comment or joke that accidently got out of your private circle? I certainly can think of a scenario like that. Maybe if the joke wasn't meant like that, but got pulled out of context. Or seemed funny at the time, but later sort of turned out rather mean.

In my opinion, not knowing the exact detail, we (the people of the internet) should let it slide, enjoy the game and let the person/people responsible punish themselves. I would be horribly emberassed if I had left that code in. Also, don't forget it was a deeply embedded piece of code in what is essentialy a late beta. It was probably changed in the "real" version, I don't actually know that, because noone talks about that.

 

[Do4600]

I'd imagine - or hope, at least - that this is some really, stupendously, dumb in-joke at Techland, and not indicative of someone's actual attitudes.

Oh, it's indicative of somebodies attitudes alright, against a NONEXISTANT character.

I don't get how this is important, it even has her name in the file, if it is offensive it's aimed specifically at a character that only exists in code, it's a narrow field here, unless you're Purna how does it refer to you? The file is not named "EveryFeministisaWhore".

 

[Revolutionary]

To be honest I don't see this as a big deal, it's one small line of debug code. If this actually offends you, don't buy the game. It's not like if I made a game I'd consider the possibility that someone would comb the code of an old build of it. (It's party the fault of techland for releasing the old build though.)

 

[mikeysnakes]

I bet if it said something against men on a male character, like "pig", nobody would say a thing about it being bad.

But wait really, "Pig" is equivalent to "feminist whore"?

I think the big problem is that in most of the world, except for the internet and fox news, feminism actually describes the people who have worked for equal rights and continue to all of these years. So when people say shit like that, it's like saying there should still be Jim Crowe laws. So the point isn't "it's insulting women" the point is that it's insulting that group, and I'm sorry to break it to you, for all of the people who think feminists are women who are looking for special treatment, most of the world isn't going to agree that the feminist group is bad.

 

[Jake Lewis Clayton]

Secondly, throughout much of the western world, the men aren't conscripted either, and haven't been for decades. I can't speak for your nation (in ignorance of what it is), but if they tried to re-introduce conscription here for any gender, there'd be outrage. [small]Though, conscription is a bit of an awkward issue, people only tend to support it if they support whatever war there is going on at the time, and that's another issue altogether[/small]

Actually quite a few countries in europe still have national service.

Basically your conscripted for about 3-7 years (depending on country) when you turn a certain age.

 

[Do4600]

... Except for the N-word. That honestly has way too much hate behind it to have a reason to live.

The more you try to ban a word, the more you try to control it's usage, the more afraid you are to use it, the more power you give it.

 

[Loreley]

I gotta say, after reading this thread, the sad thing about the whole matter is not the joke in itself, which is stupid, but meh.

The sad thing is the people here, eager to bring out straw feminists and slapping each other on the back because they are so proud they are un-PC and don't give a damn about hurting people; happy to condone things that are much more hurtful than this joke up there because oh, those wimmenfolks, they sure are getting their knickers in a bunch again. Yes, it's very nice how easily you can shrug off attacks that aren't aimed at you and don't hurt you. You are so very brave.

(Not saying this applies to everybody who defends Dead Island, of course. I don't find the "joke" in question that bad either and can certainly understand the "What's the big deal" faction of the comments.)