The most recent ‘scandal’ event in EVE was the name change of the alliance “Just Let It Happen” due to a reported EULA violation that it promoted ‘rape culture’.
First, I’d love for someone to explain to me how changing an alliance name in EVE results in fewer rapes. Not less ‘rape culture’, whatever you want to imagine that might be, but actual rapes. Like was someone going to go out and rape someone tomorrow because they logged in and saw “Just Let It Happen” on their screen, but now that its been changed that person is all set on the raping?
This whole thing blew up, including getting CCP Falcon to comment that the decision was made by a support person, rather than a higher-up within CCP like Falcon. There was confusion over this because typically Falcon is the guy who approves alliance icons into the game, but that doesn’t mean he also approves or is in charge of name changes. The community also put together a nice list of other questionable names if viewed through the eyes of a SJW snowflake, which I think went a long way to show just how silly the initial issue really was.
Thankfully because CCP is CCP rather than your typical tone-deaf MMO devs, the change was reverted and everyone’s favorite online pro-rapist alliance is back! Their celebration roam using Rapiers, Coercers, and Stabbers should go swimmingly (yes I stole this joke from Reddit).
Hardcore Casual 
It was probably reported several time I would think, or at some point a connection was placed between the name and rape.
I know personally in Warcraft when we were considering a guild name a suggestion was made to call it “of the short bus”. There was a lot of laughter in guild chat, along with other suggestions like “Special Snowflake”. But as it happened there were at least two people in guild that had special needs children, and they were upset with the choices, which was understandable. So we created something entirely different.
While I do agree that a lot of the time people are reading into things to much and being offended, I would have to ask if there were other reasons besides just the name.
Key difference in the two situations though.
In yours the group made a decision that impacted only that group, which was a self-selected process. If someone had been dead-st on having one of the rejected names, they could have left to join such a guild.
In the EVE example, it was someone trying to force their view on everyone else, which ironically is one of the things they claim to be fighting against.
In my opinion it is appropriate and important for CCP to draw the line somewhere.
On the one hand, I think that in this case you would have to be a bit sensitive to be bothered. On the other hand, rape is a pretty sensitive topic. Estimates of the number of women who have been raped or sexually molested in the US run as high as one in six (!), and I suspect it might be even higher in some of the second-world countries with a large playerbase. EvE already has something of an earned reputation as an unfriendly place for women. If I were a woman who had been victimized, this is the kind of thing that might send me off to play some less-creepy game. It’s not like this is an isolated thing, either. Phrases like “rape cage” and “rape train” used to crop up a lot around EvE, although thankfully they seem to have died out a bit recently.
Indeed, as one of my close female friends was recently raped, CCP’s reversal is making me think about whether I want to renew my subscription. That’s about the last thing I want to be thinking about when I log in to play a space game. In point of fact, I quit Goonswarm a few months ago entirely because I was uncomfortable with a bunch of the culture there. My friends who got me in are great people, but the alliance as a whole was full of “ironic” nastiness. I really didn’t need to hear people calling each other “coons” in channel, or see the Theta logo, or the “sarcastic” gay bashing, or…well, you get the point.
Obviously, one of the unique and special things about EvE is that CCP tolerates a wide variety of styles and behaviors that would be absolutely forbidden elsewhere. That said, I don’t think it’s good for the game if the creepy haters pile up. Ideally, discipline would be done by the players themselves, but there’s no mechanism in EvE to impact a player, corp or alliance in any very interesting way. At best, all of New Eden gets together and runs someone out of their space—and we both saw how painless that turns out to be even if you can pull it off.
So…yeah. Balancing in-game roleplaying with real-life issues is hard, and especially hard in EvE. Labeling this whole thing a “SJW plot” trivializes some pretty non-trivial stuff.
The trivializing is part of the problem. If someone cares to make a difference on the topic of preventing rape, they aren’t helping their cause by going after something like this and creating nothing but noise, especially because the name didn’t even mean what that person thought it meant (or at the very least, its not a direct rape reference, but rather a ‘let it happen’ when you get tackled and are going to die).
http://updates.eve-volt.net/primary-is/primary-is-just-let-it-happen-fum8/
I will take the word of a member of “Just let it happen” over the word of a sensitive snowflake blogger triggered by accusations of rape culture: the name was proposed as a direct reference to rape jokes.
The top hits on Google are references to this alliance, this episode of EVE’s history, various fandoms wanting certain relationships to become sexual, and a bunch of rape porn.
Yeah, the rape sloth meme does seem to have a storied pedigree.
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/rape-sloth
Damn sloths always raping our women!
Gamers for the most part definitely lack social sensitivity on many topics, and it is important to at least have these discussions. I support special needs kids and there is a big push (in Canada, anyway) to eliminate the “R” word from acceptable vocabulary. It is highly offensive and derogatory.
I see it every 10 minutes in WoW.
I still have faith in humanity that when educated and discussed in a non condescending way that people can understand and change terms they use and the context they use them.
I don’t feel being empathetic and open to understanding how language can hurt makes me a bad person. I also don’t purport to being perfect in this regard in my own past.
On the subject directly, I had no clue about the meme or its implications prior to this but now that I do it is something easy to exclude regardless of the intent.
Word usage and meaning change over time. I think like fag, retard is also slowly going the way of the N word for most people, but just like the N word today, you are always going to have idiots out there throwing those words around.
But special needs children are real, while ‘rape culture’ is about as real as the magic man in the clouds granting wishes.
This is probably the first time reading your blog in what, eight years, that I think you’ve actually managed to come off as siding with the virulently annoying cucks who bang on about things like ethics in game journalism.
I mean literally why does it matter if people find it offensive or not? Like honestly I’m not sure what I find more pathetic – people going after rape culture in a game that’s almost entirely played by men, half of whom are reasonably normal people, the other half being close to the dregs of basement dwelling humanity, is absolutely not the hill to die on in the name of social progress. But then equally how insecure and tragic do you have to be to actually be attached to the name ‘Just Let It Happen’ that it matters to you at all in life and, more the point, how much spreadsheet-induced brain damage do you have to have to not at least acknowledge that in real life if you called your pub quiz team that you’d look like a real fucking prick? Not that I’m saying you’re the latter, but the people who legitimately complain “muh SJWs” are some of the most banal, moronic, insensitive and immature people on the planet. Why side with them?
Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of hyper-sensitive oppressive lefties who’ve been mollycoddled their whole life, read one too many pseudo-intellectual articles and think that every single moment of their life is a political battle that they can only win through no-platforming et al. But equally they’re a tiny, irrelevant, much-strawmanned minority; they’re a near fictitious boogeyman constructed by a load of numbskull redditors who’ve never actually looked at real politics in the real world, who have nothing better to do than whine on their shitty echochamber about stuff that has had no actual impact on their real lives, doesn’t have an impact on their real lives and never will have an impact on their lives.
“The trivializing is part of the problem. If someone cares to make a difference on the topic of preventing rape, they aren’t helping their cause by going after something like this and creating nothing but noise, especially because the name didn’t even mean what that person thought it meant”
But this isn’t an argument. What are you actually saying? Don’t upset a load of dudes who play games all day because their bunker mentality can’t handle empathetic language and their use of it being dragged out of the memes and echo chambers and into the 21st century? It’s not a zero-sum game here – there aren’t hordes of anti-rape campaigners who could be doing something else who’ve just happened to stumble on this issue, it’s part of the broader and, imho, necessary drive to get literally every aspect of society on board with a project of tolerance.
“because the name didn’t even mean what that person thought it meant (or at the very least, its not a direct rape reference, but rather a ‘let it happen’ when you get tackled and are going to die).”
Again I don’t really understand how this is a defence. So what? Somebody doesn’t have the social awareness to see how it’s problematic? Why don’t they just change the name, acknowledge it’s pretty explicitly referencing rape (which’s been around a lot longer than tackling in EVE), preferably go “oh sorry, I see why it’s a problem” and move on with their lives? Why is this even an issue? Free speech in video games? Don’t make me laugh.
Don’t get me wrong, despite being deeply entrenched in my feminist, post-modernist literature, I’m somewhat sceptical that a ‘rape culture’ actually exists, especially in the middle classes, especially in the West – but on the other hand I can see where they’re coming from, and some countries definitely do have a culture where actual bodily sexual assault is normalised. And you can’t deny that there’s a load of men out there with positively savage view on gender relations.
All of this is to say that I think you’re doing yourself a real disservice by throwing your lot in with these morons and using words like “SJW Snowflake”. They don’t really exist except as a tiny minority on a couple of blog sites. You’ve generally come across as a much smarter, critical and empathetic person than the absolute dregs who parrot this nonsense and are legitimately outraged when somebody finds their language offensive. Because at the end of the day how much does it matter to you that you can’t make rape jokes in a very public sphere? Not much, I’d wager.
That tiny minority SJW snowflake is who caused the name to get changed before it was changed back (it was a single EULA ticket), so coming here and arguing that we shouldn’t worry about that tiny minority making a fuss somewhat misses the entire point doesn’t it?
As for the name itself, if the line is crossed with that one, what about a name like Hole Violence? Obviously within EVE its a reference to a PvP wormhole group, but the joke is that outside of EVE it could very easily be taken as something else. We changing that name now too and saying ‘oops sorry’? Because at that point, I’m pretty sure we are changing a LOT of Corp/Alliance names, and all to what, appease a few snowflakes and make ZERO actual difference in the world other than likely cost CCP some subscribers (which in turn makes all of EVE worse for everyone)? Sorry but nope, I’d rather have a single snowflake quit because they are offended than go down that path and effect basically everyone.
“That tiny minority SJW snowflake is who caused the name to get changed before it was changed back (it was a single EULA ticket), so coming here and arguing that we shouldn’t worry about that tiny minority making a fuss somewhat misses the entire point doesn’t it?”
I’m talking about the use of SJW in a wider context, not EVE. I don’t really understand what you mean, your own point is that they submitted a ticket that resulted in absolutely nothing changing. So they’re not only a tiny minority, they’re also powerless. Again, who cares?
“As for the name itself, if the line is crossed with that one, what about a name like Hole Violence?”
It’s much more borderline because you can actually make a several legit arguments from the “””””SJW””””” position that it’s a reference to BDSM rather than rape – and it’s significantly less “just take it lel” than the other corp name. And it actually does reference EVE. You have to be a total moron or a literal basement dweller to think that “Just Let It Happen” is a tackling reference.
Also that reddit thread with all the names up for consideration? Most of them are probably okay, albeit the “it’s snigger not nigger” mask is wearing thin.
I still don’t understand why you’re so willing to fight this issue about rape jokes not being funny. EVE might lose a few neckbeards because they can’t handle being told their crass humour isn’t that funny (I mean come on, there’s funny dark humour and there’s shit like this)? Boohoo, cry me a fucking river. I’d like to see one of their fat unwashed bodies get groped, but hey ho that’ll never happen because disgusting man-children aren’t attractive and don’t go out.
You know the slippery slope argument is also irrelevant, because the question isn’t about precedent, it’s about this particular issue; and I still don’t see why it matters. Do you actually think someone is more pathetic for being offended by “Just Let It Happen” than people who chose that particular name, are attached to it in their internet spaceships game, legitimately think it’s only about tackling and can’t possibly fathom why it’s offensive? Honestly if the latter aren’t at least pitiful to you may as well end the discussion because we’ll go nowhere slowly.
Nothing happened ultimately because hundreds of people had to act to undo the crying of a single snowflake, and luckily it happened in EVE where CCP listens to its playerbase vs a game like WoW where a guild would likely lose their name and couldn’t do anything about it. You are sounding like you are perfectly fine with snowflakes causing such things, which is odd to say the least.
I was suspended from WoW shortly after launch for being the GM of Rapecar. Over 12 years later and I still think that’s a great guild name.