The Godot Engine experienced increased popularity after some baffling policy changes from competitor Unity last year, though the game engine may have squandered that goodwill by politicizing their online presence.
After the official Godot Engine social media and Discord servers waded into the ongoing “culture war”, some feel that Godot went beyond what it should be doing as an open source game engine.
In a recent tweet, Godot asked for users to share “Woke” games, making a joke against a post which called all game engines “woke”, unaware that a vast majority of games (even mainstream ones) use readily available engines to expedite development.
(context) pic.twitter.com/pb9ByBnR8d
— V🐇xy (@voxybuns) September 27, 2024
While things could have stopped there, a backlash to the tweet prompted an overreaction from Godot, creating a cascade of escalation that’s forced the Godot Foundation to comment on it.
At first, Godot and its community manager received criticism and admittedly some harassment from anonymous social media users.
Godot’s response was to swiftly ban almost everyone giving criticism over the tweet, not just on social media, but also on GitHub. A project manager for Godot maintains they’ve only banned a small number of accounts on GitHub.
However this doesn’t change the fact that users were getting mass-banned on their Twitter, and on Discord. As a result of the increased scrutiny, users uncovered messages from an “unofficial” moderator for Godot containing slurs.
As a result of this whole mess, the Godot Foundation stepped in, releasing a statement defending their initial tweet, while also distancing themselves from the one moderator and his comments:
Statement from Godot Foundation
On Friday, we made a tweet that unexpectedly led to a wave of harassment directed at our staff and community. We unequivocally condemn this abuse.
The volume of negative engagement overwhelmed our moderation efforts. While attempting to protect the Godot community we mistakenly blocked individuals who were not participating in the harassment. The Godot Foundation Board takes full responsibility for these moderation actions.
If you believe you were blocked in error and have not violated our Code of Conduct, please contact us with the form linked below. We are committed to swiftly rectifying any mistakes.
We firmly stand by our mission to keep our community spaces free from hate, discrimination, and other toxic behaviors.
The Godot Foundation Board
On community moderator Xananax
We strongly condemn the harmful language used by Xananax, moderator of an unofficial Godot-related Discord server. We want to clarify that Xananax is not hired by nor a spokesperson for the Godot Foundation.
As an organization, we have our own official Discord server, moderated together with new volunteers vetted by our team.
-Godot Foundation
How do you feel about the Godot Engine and the entire ordeal? Sound off in the comments below!
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