Out Making Games have commissioned a report from the Video Games Industry Memo. Download it HERE
When Out Making Games was founded, it was because LGBTQ+ people working in the UK and European games industry needed a community to call their own. That need has not gone away. If anything, the past few years have made it more acute.
What makes our community different from other minority groups in the industry is something often overlooked: LGBTQ+ people are, in nearly every case, born to and raised by people who are not LGBTQ+ themselves. We are not concentrated in particular neighbourhoods, regions or even families. We are dispersed everywhere in the world, growing up surrounded by cultures, faiths and traditions that may or may not accept us.
That dispersal is both our strength and our weakness. Our community spans every country, every discipline and craft, every genre, every part of game making. But it also means we are less organised than other minority groups, our cultures vary enormously across regions, and we can feel limited in power. A queer game developer in Lagos, Riyadh or Shanghai does not have the same resources, protections or visible community as one in London or Berlin.
This is why the trend documented in this report matters so much. The censorship of LGBTQ+ content in games is being driven hardest in the countries where our siblings have the least support, where they may be subjected to harsh criminal sentences, or where their inhuman treatment can lead to severe mental health crisis. And now it is leaking back into the democracies where we thought our rights were settled.
Games are one of the few cultural forms with the reach to do something about that. Every time a queer character appears in a game played in a country where being LGBTQ+ is criminalised, every time a player can express their identity through character creation, every time a developer keeps a Pride flag in the world rather than quietly removing it, that is a thread connecting our dispersed community. Those threads matter because they show people, queer and otherwise, that being LGBTQ+ is normal and deserves respect and equal treatment. Games can do this in places where books and films cannot. That is why their censorship is being pursued so hard, and why it must be resisted.
For LGBTQ+ people with safety and protection, and our allies, this report is a call to do much more for our siblings in countries where being LGBTQ+ is criminalised. That means demanding transparency from the companies and platforms we work with, holding the line on the protections we already have, and refusing to let economic pressure quietly erase what we have built.
We are proud to have commissioned Trapped in the Network, a new report you can download here, from Video Games Industry Memo which explores rising censorship of video game content related to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and all other sexual orientations and genders not considered to be cisgender (LGBTQ+) across the world. We hope it helps the industry, and the community within it, find the confidence to act.
The report explores:
A brief history of digital censorship and how a more ‘porous’ approach to content censorship has encouraged self-censorship through three tactics: generating fear of retribution, creating friction when accessing content, and flooding the discourse with supportive narratives to control the conversation.
Why LGBTQ+ content and communities are a common target for oppression, what states hope to achieve by marginalising the community and why this has led to the group being a specific target for censorship.
How video game content became a major target for censorship, particularly after successful video games like The Last of Us and Baldur’s Gate 3 challenged traditional narratives about who plays games.
The practicalities of LGBTQ+ censorship in games, including the way states create a framework of fear, how platforms impose friction as the frontline of enforcement, why businesses and institutions self-censor to avoid blowback, and the way some groups or individuals harass and attack creators to silence voices.
How LGBTQ+ censorship within games has a ‘contagion’ effect, spreading from states that have strict censorship laws to the rest of the video game world due to the global, digital nature of the industry.
What we need to do to counter censorship of LGBTQ+ content in games, including ways to change public policy to support creators, how to strengthen platform moderation to push back against censorship, ways to embolden businesses to avoid self-censorship, and ways to protect and celebrate LGBTQ+ players and groups.
Download the report in full HERE
Directors, Out Making Games
