The American Right, a squirming bundle of grievances held together by supposed reverence for free speech, has been on a cancellation and censorship spree since the killing of Charlie Kirk earlier this month. Publications like MSNBC and The Washington Post have yielded to far-right pressure, as did ABC in the case of late-night host Jimmy Kimmel. Schools, airlines, and even NASDAQ have given staff the boot as the likes of JD Vance and Elon Musk cheer them on from their bully pulpits.
The witch hunt has made its way to the world of video games as well, with an artist at Ghost of Yotei developer Sucker Punch losing her job days after Kirk’s death following social media jokes about Kirk and an ensuing mob effort to get her fired. Late last week, a community manager on SWAT game Ready Or Not was fired as a result of furor around their take that “nothing of value was lost” when Kirk died. This week, Storm Lancers developer ProbablyMonsters announced it had fired an employee, seemingly its global marketing manager, following a series of comments like "Charlie Kirk's epitaph should read 'Worth it for the second amendment.’”
A firestorm of debate ensued in Ready Or Not’s Discord, where the community manager was active and generally well-liked, with some messages viewed by Aftermath lamenting the studio’s decision while others came to the conclusion that the community manager got their just desserts for “[celebrating] the death of someone for speaking their mind,” not even remotely detecting the irony in celebrating a government-encouraged movement that’s trying to get people fired for… speaking their minds.
Sucker Punch and Ready Or Not developer Void Interactive did not reply to Aftermath’s requests for comment as of this publishing. A ProbablyMonsters representative declined to provide additional details.
There are no dogwhistles anymore.
Those behind an email campaign targetting Warhammer publisher Games Workshop have claimed that they successfully got an employee suspended for saying on Facebook that he isn’t shedding any tears over Kirk’s death because Kirk was "a fascist cunt carrying enormous amounts of water for a side that has no compunctions committing structural and systemic political violence against the working class and the people of Gaza," but Games Workshop has not publicly confirmed the suspension or replied to Aftermath’s request for additional details.
Beyond that, aggrieved Kirk stans have forced a statement out of Microsoft, seemingly in relation to comments from Blizzard employees, about how it takes “matters like this very seriously” and is “currently reviewing each individual situation,” as well as Bandai Namco, which condemned “AI-generated images circulating online that depict the Bandai Namco Toys & Collectibles America Inc. logo on packaging associated with graphic or violent content, including references to recent events.” (Bandai Namco has since deleted the statement.) Bethesda was also pressured into deleting an Indiana Jones promotional post in which Indy pet a cat and said, “You don’t care much about those fascists, do you?,” because apparently the people behind these campaigns have just decided to say the quiet part out loud now.
The Gamergate 2.0 mob responsible for recent tea kettle storms, marshalled by the likes of nearly-60-year-old games industry washout Mark “Grummz” Kern and MMO streamer-turned-political-pundit Zack “Asmongold” Hoyt, has been kicking around for quite some time, beginning to percolate even prior to the emergence of the modern anti-woke movement and then roaring to life on the back of last year’s still-ridiculous Sweet Baby Inc conspiracy theory.
Recent events have, unsurprisingly, galvanized the aforementioned influencers and their ilk, with Kern, Hoyt, the KotakuInAction subreddit, and a menagerie of other YouTubers and community members plucking game developers who’ve spoken ill – or even not entirely reverently – of Kirk from relative obscurity and instructing followers to get them cancelled (which usually means fired). While Hoyt has promised to “do this until [offending developers] are all gone or the companies that protect them have their reputations destroyed beyond repair,” he’s spent the past week and change out of action following the passing of his father. In his stead, a segment of his Twitter community, Roach Ranch, has taken up the cause of naming and shaming developers who shuffle a toe out of line.
Tandem to this effort, a Steam user created a curator page called CharlieTweetsDetected that lists games worked on by developers who “celebrated the tragedy” of Kirk’s death. Reminiscent of a similar Sweet Baby Inc Detected page from 2024, it currently boasts over 28,000 followers and has already given a thumbs-down to over 100 games.
This all sounds bad, and in many ways, it is. Developers and personalities identified by these groups are facing increased harassment – some for the first time in their careers.
"This is my first time getting swept up in a harassment campaign," a developer who made Charlie Kirk-related comments on social media and who was granted anonymity out of concern that speaking openly could spur further harassment told Aftermath. "It was surreal to watch a video where I was directly referenced along with my colleagues ... where [Asmongold] said he wanted to ‘ruin our lives,’ and that we were ‘animals – and that's exactly what they are, you shouldn't view them as people, you shouldn't view them as a person with a political disagreement with you, these are violent animals.’ It's practically a 1:1 quote for Goebbels’ ‘These are not humans, but animals’ statement about Jewish people. There are no dogwhistles anymore, and not only has YouTube kept that video up – and, I'm assuming, monetized – but that video has been seen several million times."
This is the first time I've actually had to recommend other people lock down their accounts on the basis of me being targeted. You just don't know who else they're going to find an excuse to harass.
Some have been forced to at least temporarily shut down social media accounts to avoid being bombarded with harassment, which the mob has taken as (spurious) evidence that they have been fired from their jobs.
“What's remarkable about this instance,” another developer who made Charlie Kirk-related comments on social media and who was granted anonymity to avoid further harassment told Aftermath, “is that a) at least in my case, they have been much more successful in getting their followers to expend the effort to harass me on an individual basis, b) the campaign has been much more sustained, whereas usually it dies off rather quickly when they don't get what they want, and c) they are expanding their field of targets nigh indiscriminately. You usually see them targeting one person at a time, more often than not marginalized people who aren't high up in the company, but this time they're happy to add even C-suiters to their list. This is the first time I've actually had to recommend other people lock down their accounts on the basis of me being targeted. You just don't know who else they're going to find an excuse to harass, and that part in particular is alarming.”
Kirk zealots have crept into unexpected places as well – for example, the personal Discord of an Australian fighting game commentator Teq, who was removed from a community-run Street Fighter organization called SFAustralia after saying “get got idiot” in response to Kirk’s death.
"I'm incredibly surprised at how effective and far-reaching the campaign has been,” Teq told Aftermath. “I think what was particularly shocking for our scene is how POC- and queer-centric the fighting game community is, so to see it rearing its head all the way down here in Australia blindsided us all."
Another SFA member was removed not long after, also for comments made outside SFA’s channels.
But while some companies and organizations have beaten a hasty retreat in the face of this campaign, you can still – as of this writing, at least – count the number of people whose actual jobs it’s impacted on one hand, compared to the 100+ who’ve been fired or disciplined in other sectors. This despite an ongoing campaign with dozens of targets (hundreds if you count the CharlieTweetsDetected list). The broader shape of the grievance machine, it seems, has not changed all that much in light of recent events, and given that some version of this has been going on for years, savvier companies have grown wise to its tactics.
"Generally studios are pretty good at identifying the rabble as just that and protecting their employees," another game creator, who was granted anonymity out of concern over further harassment and who has been a repeat target of harassment mobs, told Aftermath. "Hell, when those guys lost their minds over a stray tweet of mine and tried to get me fired from [a company], the subreddits they posted in also just came to my defense and shut them down. They are certainly good at generating harassment, but no, I haven't personally seen any real ramifications of their campaigns. … I and others have found that these idiots generally lose interest and move on to something new given time. If there was a legit way to stop it that would be great, but there’s basically no path to that outside of litigation, and I cannot afford that."
One streamer in whose direction Roach Ranch’s Eye of Sauron recently turned wasn’t even aware.
"I've barely heard a peep,” they told Aftermath. “Been dogpiled by Gamergate people in the past, [and] that led to torrents of abuse/threats. [I was] harassed to the point I had to close my account for weeks at a time before. Seem to have dodged a bullet this time, I guess?"
They are certainly good at generating harassment, but no, I haven't personally seen any real ramifications of their campaigns. … I and others have found that these idiots generally lose interest and move on to something new given time.
The creator of Cruelty Squad, an unabashedly political immersive sim for which a fan made a recreation of Charlie Kirk’s shooting, has gone so far as to poke the hornet’s nest, taunting those attempting to review bomb the game and publicly boasting of a resultant sales bump.
“The amount of negative reviews has been quite low,” the Cruelty Squad developer Consumer Softproducts, who shared the Charlie Kirk map on Bluesky, told Aftermath. “I’ve also noticed that many of their [Twitter] posts haven’t actually gained much traction, with my quote tweets of them getting more likes than the original posts. Also, the sales count went up by around 40 percent compared to recent average.”
"I think even the conservatives generally don't give a shit about the Charlie Kirk stuff,” they added. “They're obviously not going to communicate that because of their internal thought policing."
The creator of the Cruelty Squad Charlie Kirk map agrees.
“The subsequent right-wing virtue signalling was just surreal to watch," the map creator told Aftermath. "It's all so fake and performative and clearly inorganic. They're not even actually making political or moral statements. It's just whining and grandstanding. Nobody on the left or right actually sees Charlie as a human being during this whole thing – just a tool or component to use. So might as well put him in a videogame as a low-poly caricature barely resembling a man because it's funny."
The CharlieTweetsDetected Steam list and sustained harassment campaigns of developers on major games, you’d think, would lead to a flood of negative reviews, but even games like Final Fantasy XIV – a Roach Ranch fixation – have only seen a trickle.
The developer who’s weathering their first real harassment storm described the impact as “relatively mild.”
"I'm lucky enough that my workplace has seemed to come to the conclusion that there is more value in retaining me as an employee and providing me resources to support me through the harassment rather than firing me," they said. "I don't feel that this harassment campaign is necessarily new or different for the most part; queer people and women in games – especially queer, women of color in games – have been bearing the brunt of targeted harassment campaigns simply for who they [are] since the Gamergate days. Of course there's the open secret that Gamergate never went away, but rather just pivoted to being the alt-right community, so the harassment never truly ended."
The mob has cast a wide net, though, and its harassment campaigns vary in severity. While some are quickly abandoned, others have persisted for days or weeks. And of course, a few have resulted in firings. Though the developer who’s had to tell other people to lock down accounts remains employed at a major studio, they don’t like the precedent a (so far) small handful of video game companies are setting.
“In my opinion, every company that has caved to their demands has contributed to the harassment and climate of fear the rest of us are enduring, and game companies that have done so, in particular, have painted a target on the back of every single person in this industry,” the developer said. “Frankly, I’m pissed.”
There's the open secret that Gamergate never went away, but rather just pivoted to being the alt-right community, so the harassment never truly ended.
I recently heard someone say they find it disturbing that the American right reacts with the same amount of outrage to the green M&M, Cracker Barrel, and the killing of a public figure. This lack of focus is a feature – not a bug – but it also means their movements are uniquely prone to running out of steam unless someone is constantly shoveling fresh fuel onto the fire. Gamergate in its various incarnations has been at it longer than just about any other, and its basic rhythm is revealing: Figureheads like Kern and Hoyt provide new controversies every week, especially as core crusades wane. Barely anybody cares about Sweet Baby anymore; dozens of uniting causes have come and gone since. Kirk is the latest, but eventually the bloom will fall off that rose as well. A lack of overall effectiveness and general disinterest in the review bomb efforts that often undergird these things suggest that might already be happening. Time will tell.
This is not to suggest a lack of caution or alarm, but rather to say that fascism is neither inevitable nor unassailable. The component parts of the modern movement, especially, are rusty and in need of constant replacement – a weak point as much as it is a necessity in this era of social-media-fried attention spans. While more companies than usual are capitulating to Gamergate 2.0’s latest all-out assault, a significant number are evidently aware of its tactics, demonstrating that even if this kind of grievance movement regularly swaps out pieces, the larger apparatus can still break down. That approach renders it necessarily hollow – less a Trojan horse and more a one-trick pony.
Additionally, it is worth remembering that despite the seeming wave of Kirk-a-mania sweeping the nation, this is all heinously unpopular outside a specific far-right bubble that’s being inflated to look much bigger than it actually is by corporate cowardice. Trump’s approval rating continues to drop following Kirk’s death, with just 39 percent of Americans giving him a thumbs up. The Kimmel suspension resulted in record-high search interest in deleting Disney Plus. Disney has already elected to lift the suspension.
More alarming, however, is the fact that the right has spent years constructing an infinitely re-deployable Snitch Force just in time for the government to begin openly cracking down on free speech. Kimmel’s suspension – which came hours after Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, threatened to “take action” against ABC – is the most high-profile example, but Trump and his cronies have repeatedly spoken of a much wider crackdown on trans people, left-wing organizations, and anything that falls under the extremely broad umbrella of “antifa.” In order to effectively enforce the speech-curtailing policies to come, they’ll need citizens to tell on each other early and often.
Every company that has caved to their demands has contributed to the harassment and climate of fear the rest of us are enduring.
A version of this is already playing out elsewhere in the gaming world. For more than a year, a group of streamers, their communities, and increasingly, politicians have pushed to get leftist politics streamer Hasan “HasanAbi” Piker banned from Twitch, largely on the laughable basis that his Palestine advocacy constitutes open support of terrorism. This movement has unsurprisingly been emboldened by Kirk’s killing, syncing up with Kern and co to suggest that Piker is a prime example of the “violent” left-wing rhetoric that’s inspiring all the nation’s killers (source: trust me, bro). It is only with this context in mind that the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s decision to request Twitch’s presence – in addition to that of Discord, Steam, and Reddit – at an upcoming Kirk-inspired radicalization hearing makes even the slightest bit of sense.
While it’s impossible to predict exactly what committee members will do on October 8, there’s a very good chance they’ll badger Twitch CEO Dan Clancy about Piker’s continued presence on the platform, something I don’t imagine his bosses at Amazon would love. Already, Twitch has suspended popular streamer and OTK co-founder Matthew “Mizkif” Rinaudo for jokes about Kirk’s death, though the company wound up un-suspending him mere hours later. The next few weeks, then, will prove to be a litmus test of Twitch and Amazon’s ability to weather Trump’s censorious storm.
The developer who’s had to tell others to lock their accounts believes those in charge of gaming companies should understand what they're dealing with by now.
“If leaders are convinced that caving will take the heat off of them, or that it's worth getting rid of ‘troublesome’ employees because they will never say the wrong thing themselves, they have failed in their absolute bare-minimum duty to pay attention to the landscape of the industry,” the developer said. “Yes, the situation is more severe and more urgent now, but the overall trend has been the same since Gamergate, and there's absolutely no excuse for not understanding that.”
