Brands these days tweet like they’re your pals, replacing yesteryear’s buzzwords and obvious ads with lackadaisical prose meant to mimic millennial affectations. Sometimes they go too far. Case in point, the official Samurai Shodown Twitter account probably should have reeled it in a bit last week to avoid having to make an apology today, not to mention sparking a new skirmish in the ongoing culture war.
It started simply enough. As more and more players celebrated Samurai Shodown’s next DLC character, Iroha—more specifically, the large amount of T&A she adds to the roster—the official Twitter account began retweeting screenshots taken from her reveal trailer. Predictably, most of these images focused on her butt rather than anything she’s capable of doing during a match. This was shortly followed by a tweet from the Samurai Shodown account itself, responding to the community’s reactions to Iroha’s reveal: “We all horny on main tonight.”
Samurai Shodown developer SNK’s fighting games tend to be pretty horny, even in a genre rife with half-naked women. The studio’s pseudo-mascot Mai Shiranui is almost always defined by the way her ample cleavage bounces and sways during fights. But Iroha is basically Sex Appeal: The Character. She is a subservient, scantily clad maid, a walking fetish if there ever was one. The Samurai Shodown community generally agrees that her purpose is so-called fanservice above all else. That players would get all hot and bothered by Iroha’s pixelated arse didn’t come as a surprise, but it was strange to see an official SNK account so explicitly cater to those tastes, especially when it came to light that the posts made female players uncomfortable.
It’s no secret that the fighting game community has a problem with women, and this latest incident gave the scene a lot to consider over the weekend. By the time Monday rolled around the offending tweets had disappeared from the Samurai Shodown account’s timeline, replaced by an apology:
A number of posts made by this account have been deemed inappropriate and offensive to members of our community.
— Samurai Shodown – Available Now! #EmbraceDeath (@samuraishodown) May 11, 2020
The admin in charge has been given a strict warning to be more considerate. The offending posts have now been deleted.
Please accept our sincerest apologies.
In a normal society, this would have been the end of things. But because everything is now part of the larger culture war, SNK’s apology became the latest rallying cry for reactionary gamers looking for examples of “cultural Marxism” and “SJW ideology” infecting the medium. This outrage manifested itself in two distinct ways: anger at the women (longtime fighting game players with a vested interest in the community) for bringing up their discomfort, and backlash against SNK itself. Much of the latter settled on senior programmer Jim Bulmer due to his history of speaking out on social justice issues. Once it was found that Bulmer had previously reached out to those women with an apology, the chuds came out in full force. Bulmer has since deactivated his account.
SNK has not responded to a request for comment.
For as much as a vocal minority of gamers treat women as interlopers, this whole Iroha situation has been a gigantic clusterfuck of non-fighting game players acting like they have authority over women who have actively engaged with the community for years. Many of the accounts responsible for the harassment offer zero indication that they’ve ever put their quarter up at the arcade, or even used a fightstick. That’s not to say you have to be Daigo Umehara to have an opinion on something that happens in fighting games, but the hypocrisy is stark. It’s a clear indication that none of this concern trolling from these bigots amounts to anything but fear of women being allowed a seat at the table.
SNK’s social media team got too horny on its Samurai Shodown account. This made some folks uncomfortable. SNK removed the posts and apologised. And now the next few days are going to be full of idiots who probably couldn’t have picked Iroha out of a lineup before telling important members of the fighting game community that they don’t belong. Please, let me off this ride.
People that use the term SJWs are usually assholes.
In the town I’m from, our local abattoir had a sign saying “Trespassers will be slaughtered”, obviously tongue in cheek. They got a ton of complaints from locals and had to change the sign.
Comedian Frankie Boyle talks about jokes taken way too literally…
The internet was a mistake.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmm
https://www.kotaku.com.au/2015/09/street-fighter-vs-bearded-ryu-is-the-hottest-ryu/
Its obviously not objectifiction if we are appreciating the male form as the male form is a form of absolute beauty and majesty that must be analysed and praised for its form!
Female bodies? Oh that stuff is toxic my man! Avert thy eyes heathen!
Yes I am being thoroughly facetious if it wasnt obvious enough…
Rules for thee but not for meeeee!
What hilarious false equivalence. Overly sexualization of a woman vs “somebody liked this character’s facial hair”. The digging for “hypocrisy” always has to go really deep.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_n5E7feJHw0
The only way to be okay and not be a bar person and still enjoy YOUR relationship with pixelated butts is to not get in on the dialogue. It’s word noise. No big picture here. Just let things be.
For fuck’s sake, Walker. For. Fuck‘s. Sake. Get your shit together, man. I haven’t even USED this account in many months. This is you putting me on permanent mod. What is wrong with this site?
Comments and users dont bring inncash its all about over saturating you with ads to the point your mob browser freezes and reposts coz their a cheap way to get that sweet sweet ad revenue..
Who cares if you cant edit coz of moderation hell! 😀
Funny… a self deprecating facetious response is against community guidelines and yet a post flat out calling people arseholes isnt