By Justin J. Cole, GLAAD’s Director of Digital Media A few weeks ago there was a group established on Facebook called “I hate gays” which openly advocated killing gay people.
BioWare’s censoring of homosexual terms on the Star Wars: The Old Republic forums was not a wise move, but they certainly weren’t the first video game company to struggle with the issue of homosexuality.
Yesterday, members of the official Star Wars: The Old Republic forum asked developer BioWare to “rethink” its policy on filtering the words “gay” and “lesbian” from posts. The official response was not elegant.
BioWare take their Star Wars role-playing seriously. So seriously that the developers are shutting down talk on Old Republic’s message boards about homosexuality, because it’s a term that does “not exist in Star Wars”.
Microsoft took a lot of flak earlier this year and last for the way they handled some gay-related stuff on Xbox Live. And rightly so. But time heals all wounds, and Microsoft are trying to make amends.
