Stellaris, a grand strategy game set in space, has characters who come in a variety of species and races. Naturally, someone made a mod to turn all the humans white.
The mod, “European Phenotype and Names Only”, makes it so your Stellaris rulers and heirs will all be white people with European names, which is why publisher Paradox pulled it from Steam. Said Paradox in a statement to Eurogamer:
“We shipped the game originally with an accurate representation of humans, that is to say diverse in both ethnicity and personality. We embrace the idea that players mod the game to best represent how they want to play, we do NOT however wish to enable discriminatory practices. We appreciate any inappropriate mods being brought to our attention and will take them down where necessary, we also encourage players to make use of the flagging function provided by Valve where needed.”
People who don’t want other races in their Stellaris playthroughs can still get the mod on ModDB. The first comment there may not surprise you:
Comments
17 responses to “Paradox Pulls Stellaris Mod That Makes All The Characters White”
How much of a fucking sad sack do you have to be to install something like that. OH NOES THERE ARE DIFFERENT PEOPLE IN MY GAME.
FFS.
I don’t know about that – I like to roleplay assholes from time to time. There seems to be a lot of people that are stuck in that mode perpetually.
I can totally see a civilisation that is very strongly patriarchal, or racist, or in some other way severely underutilises their population. Maybe, rather than just pulling this mod down, they could patch in (or release an official mod) that implements a racial trait or ethic that does this with a set of significant penalties.
“Xenophobic” is already a thing in game though.
Also, what insane reason would Paradox do that for? Putting an official patch option solely for “White Supremacy?” That’s insane.
Haha, I guess that’s true. Xenophobic is one thing, but serious inter-racial tensions within a species is another.
For me, I need to see a pretty good reason to pull content. Where the mod is presented as “Make all humans white”, that’s a pretty good reason. There is a good idea hidden in there though – you encounter plenty of space faring and pre-space civilisations in Stellaris, why not have some that are handicapped by something like perceived racial superiority? There’s nothing wrong with that idea – that the blue Blorgs subjugate all the red Blorgs for no good reason except that they’re able to – until you translate it across to humanity and it hits too close to home.
Someone who wants to roleplay the Empire from Star Wars, where a galaxy of diverse species and ethnicities are ruled by a brutal totalitarian ruling class made up of white guys with British accents?
There will probably be a mod soon that has all-female characters from diverse races. Although they will probably be wearing skimpy body armour.
How optimistic. You think they’ll actually be wearing something.
I don’t see the issue with the mod. I think it is sad that the new age crystal worshipping social justice warriors want to stop people playing games the way they want to. Maybe they want to role play a separate human faction that is based on white Europeans. Maybe in 200 years there was a calamity or big event on their alternate Earth.
Talk about a whole lot of fuss over nothing. The thing that gets me is the assumption that an all white cast is somehow racist. I mean, it makes sense that SJW’s would see this as racist because they’re traditionally racist people. But to assume that everyone else as racist as you are is pathetic.
Maybe these people should look at their own prejudices before calling out something that is not even there.
Uh, you know there was no outrage by any “SJW’s” that got this pulled, right? In fact, there’s another all-white mod that didn’t get pulled. What got it pulled was when the mod creator added a political statement to the description, and Paradox said “Yeah, nah, don’t use our game for your political statements”
Yes that is 100% evident from the comments here.
Maybe they’re racist.
The fun part the mod in question is purely cosmetic and the purpose doesn’t annoy me, what annoys me is paradox took it on themselves to censor it, they could have let it just slowly wither and die but no they had to draw attention to it, making the situation worse.
*facepalm*
How do I make space Nazis now?
That might seem like a stupid question but this is a role-playing game of a type. You make a race and you play as them. You can already select Extremist Xenophobes as a racial trait, why not play as racists too?
The headline is misleading and should say “paradox removed mod that literally (not figuratively) links to neo nazi material.”
Worth reading the Eurogamer article as it has been updated to reflect the reason for removing the mod. http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-05-24-paradox-pulls-discriminatory-stellaris-mod-that-made-all-humans-white
PC police…
Would be a useful mod to have in a medieval Europe game. As games and TV feel the need to add diversity where it doesn’t belong.