The digital game retailer has not clearly explained how the hate symbols made it into an email, but apologized for the "unfortunate visual association."
And yeah I can absolutely see a German translator/QA person just going, “No, I’m not sending out a fucking SS rune. That’s a fucking crime.” Because apparently it was only censored in the German language version of the newsletter, Germans with language set to English still received it with the runes. So that part, the “hey the German censor was the only one who caught this”, that I can believe. And some PR person rephrasing this embarrassing state of affairs as “German QA” and “respect for local sensitivities” that I can believe too.
Beyond that, there is pretty deep lore on this already. The developer used an Indian sun wheel before being made aware of possible “connotations”, and then apparently misinterpreted the term connotations, see here (same reddit thread as above, but different comment). Then the GoG rep saying in the reddit thread above the S-like runes were supposed to be Sowilō runes, which are indeed sun symbols, although not Slavic ones, which may comes in pairs, but not in the same orientation, and seem to render different depending on fonts. But the email seems to have used Greek Kappa, which may or may not render differently, looks like it doesn’t. It’s confusing, but plausible enough to have a difficult time disbelieving it outright.
But on the whole, those three/four symbols just don’t come together by accident. Some person put those there on purpose and is trying to play it off as a mistake. I suspect the author of that first damage control message on reddit.
“We noticed it was some nazi shit but we did it anyway, except in Germany where it’s illegal.” Pretty wild defense.
Well I don’t know. Their response overall is quite incoherent in places, but they mentioned somebody, presumably German, interfering twice now:
https://x.com/GOGcom/status/2062981104362242551
https://old.reddit.com/r/gog/comments/1txmcyd/ts_gotta_be_racist_gog_explain/opxtour/
And yeah I can absolutely see a German translator/QA person just going, “No, I’m not sending out a fucking SS rune. That’s a fucking crime.” Because apparently it was only censored in the German language version of the newsletter, Germans with language set to English still received it with the runes. So that part, the “hey the German censor was the only one who caught this”, that I can believe. And some PR person rephrasing this embarrassing state of affairs as “German QA” and “respect for local sensitivities” that I can believe too.
Beyond that, there is pretty deep lore on this already. The developer used an Indian sun wheel before being made aware of possible “connotations”, and then apparently misinterpreted the term connotations, see here (same reddit thread as above, but different comment). Then the GoG rep saying in the reddit thread above the S-like runes were supposed to be Sowilō runes, which are indeed sun symbols, although not Slavic ones, which may comes in pairs, but not in the same orientation, and seem to render different depending on fonts. But the email seems to have used Greek Kappa, which may or may not render differently, looks like it doesn’t. It’s confusing, but plausible enough to have a difficult time disbelieving it outright.
But on the whole, those three/four symbols just don’t come together by accident. Some person put those there on purpose and is trying to play it off as a mistake. I suspect the author of that first damage control message on reddit.
They only apologize when they get caught. Everything else is “fine”.