I guess you never met snowkatt

NINJAD!!!

I disagree. Many companies have taken sides and come out fine. Many games developers spoke in favor of ethics in games journalism back in the day and their companies are fine for it. Even Valve stood up against this mob recently. The mob exploited a reporting mechanism on Steam and mass flagged a bunch of games they wanted removed from Steam which triggered an automatic response sent to developers telling them their games were under review and at risk for removal from the store. *Maybe* it's just a coincidence that I see a lot of the same games listed at RestEra in their banned discussion list...ahem...

As a result, Valve came out strong, saying that they are no longer removing games due to content unless the content is outright illegal. Essentially saying they were no longer bowing to the masses. Games journalists tried to smear them over it with a bunch of articles condemning Valve for lack of quality control and the like. Plenty of tweets, but Valve is no worse off for the attacks. They seem stronger for it. Because when these offendatrons learned their bullying didn't work, they seem to have given up and went looking for a smaller kid to steal their lunch money. And they found GoG again...

Again, they would not point out the same cases.

An ultraconservative leader or supporter would call "political correctness" any debunking of xenophobic or homophobic propaganda. A gamergater would call "political correctness" any sarcasm about games crafted around male teenager power fantasy. An anarchist or a communist would call "political correctness" any defense of bourgeois values. A leftist humanitarian would call "political correctness" any diplomatic stance or politeness towards dictators, or self-serving charity discourses. A vegan would call "political correctness" the concealement of violence in our food chain, while a hunter or a butcher would call "political correctness" the outrage around animal killing. A nationalist would call "political correctness" any deconstruction of grand national narratives or ethnic identities, while an ethno-historian would call "political correctness" the defense of national myths. A unapologetic rapist would call women empowerment "politically correct" while a feminist would call "politically correct" the silence about gendered violence. An islamist would call "politically correct" the defense of Israel, and a sionist would call "politically correct" the crisicism of islamophobia. All could complain about each other's "political correctness". And beyond the subjects themselves, there would be disputes about the threshold (where legitimate stigmatization ends, where hypercorrection starts).

Also, even within this forum, we would certainly disagree about each other's list of exemples. Not to mention those (and I'm amongst them) who are critical of the "political correctness" notion itself, and would be reluctant to use it to describe normative discourses.

It would take ages, even just here, to agree about this concept, and about what does or doesn't exemplify it. And if a survey targets a representative diversity, you can bet all the more safely on the unstability of its meaning.

Steam constantly takes steps in addressing the inherent abuse of the voting system....unlike GOG...but thats not the same as trying to stand up to the crowd.
The only sane attitude from such companies is to avoid any confrontation with the horde, as i said before, they are making money selling games and as such, all customers are valuable and they dont want to alienate anyone.
The fight against ResetEra and the likes, will not be fought in game forums, but in courts. Just have a little patience and youll see.

You are hanging to theoretical straws while stubbornly ignoring reality.
Theoretically you would be correct, but reality proves you wrong, as in recent years, the term political correctness has been used exclusively in the sense that was mentioned to you in the begining, and almost never in any of the ways you mentioned above.

Anyway here is a funny video, that takes a somewhat related issue less seriously while still criticising
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAF2UmyXe-4&t=909s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhPHFX3BLmc

For the sake of clarity, posted the videos as something funny to take our minds off our little debate, they are not meant to prove anything.

In your circles possibly. But it's still easily mentionned by anyone who feel they are disturbing a general consensus on discursive decency and get the dirty look for that. This perceived consensus changes and has been changing with the years, but also heterogeneously within subcultures. Nowadays, after having sounded so cool and so legitimizing, passed from hand to hand, this word is activated a lot in the far right arsenal (along with "triggered", "offended", "snowflake" and all these fallback readymade elements of language), often to shrug off the criticism of genuine abjections. But it is still largely associated with times where progressive humour was transgressive, and where transgression by itself was a breach into conservative conventions, bringing fresh air into uptight norms of decency. That's precisely why it is used so much. It has the comfy aura of a refuge value, gained in a very broad array of contexts. It's a reflex word. People don't even think about its actual meaning(s). "Politically incorrect" doesn't mean anything, it's a scam, but it's actually "politically incorrect" to point it out (see?).

So, mention the pressure of political correctness, and it'll evokes anything and everything, like a Rorschach bolt. It evokes the religious pushback against Life of Brian. It evokes the moral outrage around Clinton/Lewinsky. It evokes the hunt of Polanski. It evokes the Charlie Hebdo and Hara Kiri brand of provocative humanist humour, or, in France, the provocative jokes of Michel 'Coluche' Colucci, the humanitarian clown. It evokes dissent, the shock in front of transgressive humour when it was new, and, in a hypocritical fashion, the ghost outrage in front of today's heirs of those comedians, who try to sound as scandalous as possible (pee, tit, dick, lol) and, in order to exist, push in vain against a non-existing wall, tickling society in its rests of taboos - alas the only thing that still succesfully shocks is genuine inhumanity. But it evokes, indirectly, all the everyday frustrations of ordinary interactions and polite restraints, of which clowns avenge us. People need "political correctness" to breach, and, thus, love to complain about it, abstractly. It's, again, common sense. The notion is here, has to be here, before even having a content.

But when you look at the content, people don't agree. Take the most common, vocal, usage of its notion : the martyrhood of populists, revisionnists, racists, and frantic conspirationists. They are nowadays the first ones to refer to this concept publicly and loudly. Each time a neo-fascist is told to shut up, he brings up a conspiracy of political correctness silencing his big truth, instantly making him such a heroic rebel. Amongst all those ordinary people who, when asked, evoke the old cliché of political correctness (a loaded, necessarily negative word, that you're kind of forced to deplore, as if asked whether "there is too much crime and corruption" or not), how many of them would apply this concept to the criticism of populist demogogues ? This question is completely occulted by the emptiness of the word. "Oh yes, there is political correctness, this is bad, but... him ? No, that's not about political correctness, he's just insane." Hence, what I pointed out, the largely overlapping complain about "hate speech". People feel there is too much "political correctness", and they feel there is too much "hate speech". They don't apply their idea of "political correctness" to their complaint about "hate speech". Regardless of the fact that said hate speech pundits would define it so.

This alone should illustrate how diverse the meaning, and how vacuous the term. And how futile it is to take a given exemple of "political correctness" and assume the position of the polled categories about it. It should be a straightforward reflex. Distancing oneself from the self-centered projection of meaning. Observing how diverse and contradictory one apparently "shared feeling" can be. Just like making a poll about how people feel about their religious beliefs in society, and discovering that atheists feel cornered by believers just like believers feel cornered by atheists. You may conclude that a majority of people feel like a disdained minority in their beliefs, but you can't use this unprecise statistic as a whole to support the specific exemple of either atheists or believers being omg oppressed. Same thing, again, as passing a law about having to shake hands, justified by how many people complain about "incivility".

Take a random Trump lie, being shot down by fact-checking medias. You genuinely believe that all the people who see "political correctness" as an issue will defend him as soon as Fox and Friends pop out the p.c. victimhood card ? That would be the consequence of a homogeneous understanding of "political correctness". And that would be what Trump fans would like to believe, and to present as reality. And that's how that report was used in this very thread.

It is simply false. And if you don't know any people who (rightly or wrongly) complain about "political correctness" in very different ways than the alt-right, if you believe in such a homogeneity, then it's simply a matter of limited exposure.

But basing the poll's interpretations on an assumption of consensual meaning and content of such a term, that's just very bad sociology (good sociology has devices to avoid this trap). And, of course, that's no ethnology at all (ethnology, by nature, avoids this trap).

At least I hope that the authors are aware of this limitation, take their results for what they are, and don't indulge themselves in abusive extrapolations of that sort.

_____
Edit :
I conflate a bit two cultures. There would be a lot to say about crude sexual jokes or black humour, when compared between France and the USA. And, as such, about the relations between notions of "puritanism" and "political correctness". One more source of confusion around the usage of this concept and its ranges of application.

It doesn't have mass appeal?
First. Remembere a while back in the comments there was a link to research that says it's only about 7% people are in favor of Political Correctness? That means other 93% will be at least ok with Postal.
Second. There are a lot of niche games on GOG. Like Crusader Kings. Or other old games, for that matter.

Appealing to "everyone" means across multiple demographics. What you're saying applies only to gaming, and even then, something like Postal is going to have high negatives because it *sets out to offend people*. So with respect to a platform like Twitter, you're *way* off the mark, and re gaming platforms in general, you're exagerating the appeal that sort of genre has.

Again, customers aren't the only consideration here because you don't have to be a customer to cause problems for a business. It may well be that a majority of GOG's customers have no problem with "Twittergate", or whatever you want to call it, but GOG *has* to look beyond that if it wants to survive. So niche marketing makes a lot of sense if it wants to sell these sorts of products without the fallout and headaches that it has recently experienced.

Slow down there bud, you didn't read the study obviously. It doesn't say that 93% of people are against political correctness. It said 80% were.

Also, as I mentioned before, this study can only be called a study in loose terms. It was not a well conducted study. It isn't well sourced, it hasn't been peer reviewed, tested, or had replicated results. It was produced by a think tank with obvious bias and the authors have produced no other research. They didn't even properly define their questions. If you ask people if they support political correctness with no context of course most people will say no.

Video games in general aren't really a "mass appeal" product. There are huge barriers to access that limit different demographics access to the product. It can be an expensive hobby, which limits access for poor people. It requires a small degree of technical aptitude, which can limit access for older people. The closest video games come to being a mass appeal product is on mobile devices, games that would mostly be derided as non-games by the people arguing that a game like Postal could definitely have mass appeal.

Postal was pretty much designed to be a game of non-approval. Saying it has mass appeal is like saying Hatred had mass appeal. It was designed specifically to try to insult huge segments on the population to try and appear edgy.... that seems to be trying to appeal to a niche demographic to me.

And you haven'd read my comment, obviously. I said 93% of people will be ok with Postal, not all 93% will like Postal.

Obviously, the Postal 2 and it's DLCs would be most appealing to Coservative audience (25% according to the research) due to their political themes. But there could be potential players among other groups, due to for example Postal's gameplay or some jokes, that are not tied to politics.

The only group, who would be agains Postal franchise for sure, are people who are rigidly pro-PC and pro-SJ. They will be offended by any controversial content.
Do you know that some of those examples are blatant lies. (For example gamergater would never consider sarcasm to be PC)

Right, so why utilize mass marketing across the board? Selectively, sure, but that doesn't seem to have occurred to anyone, which I find a little shocking. And I have to question the wisdom of sinking so much time and money into Cyberpunk 2077 because it's going to have to be hugely successful, and I don't think that's a given.

And what's YOUR solution, not advertise anything that can be considered controversial to anyone? I guess GoG also shouldn't advertise Witcher 3 or any other Witcher game on Twitter because they have been deemed racist, sexist, misogynistic and transphobic by it's "betters" at ResetEra.

And what do you think a client like Running With Scissors would think about that? GoG promises their developers a release window of targeted exposure and you are saying GoG shouldn't advertise this game on its release? I'm sure that will go over very well with developers releasing their games here...

I'm sorry, it's just your opinion that GoG has to look beyond this to survive. GoG needs to sell games to survive. And not marketing because you fear backlash from a group intent on causing backlash isn't a solution. Not marketing is a great way not to sell games. The truth is that outside of that small echo chamber is a large group of people who can care less what the likes of Polygon, Kotaku, Eurogamer or ResetEra have to say. This group that can care less is your real audience.

Mark Kern had a bit to say on the subject tonight about how many long time business higher ups just don't understand the new age of social media and overreact to these mobs, not understanding that this outrage is meaningless. That the complaints are not reflective of one's customer base and its important not to overreact.

C'mon, really? The fans of Postal 2 are going to be similar to fans of South Park or Family Guy. I doubt very strongly that this audience is entirely conservative. The game pokes fun at every side of the political spectrum that takes itself too seriously. I'd venture to guess the real core audience is non-PC liberals, in terms of the study categories try the "Politically Disengaged"...

Fundamentally political correctness is used as a strategy to unfairly attack things that someone doesn't agree with. The core value that most of our other freedoms and prosperity is based on in the western world is that an individual's ability to reason things out for themselves is a fundamental right. 'Hateful' speech and ideas are absolutely free to be spoken, unless they stray into a call to action. Trying to deplatform ideas you don't agree with hurts everyone, because without those ideas being critically analyzed they will not be properly dismissed or accepted based on their own merits. That's why free speech has become such a hot issue lately, with some people using the vague made up word 'hate speech' to try and dismiss ideas they don't like without considering them. We need critical thinking, not critical theory. If someone is actually engaging in 'hate speech', that will become clear pretty quickly and most people won't agree with them; the problem comes in when someone else tries to define what 'hate speech' is and prevent me from hearing it based on their opinion. That's a dangerous thing.

In addition, how someone else takes something that I say is not my responsibility, I don't control them; and they don't know what my motivation is. They can say that they were offended and why, but they have no right to force me to change how I think or what I say based on their demands, especially if there was no intent to cause offense. We don't need political correctness, basic professional civility worked great 20 years ago; all this political correctness is increasing societal problems, not decreasing them.

My main contentions with it in regard to gaming, they are trying to tear down the forms of entertainment that I enjoy, particulaly gaming, though thankfully they have had limited success in undermining gaming compared to movies and old tv shows. Instead of creating something new, making their own new entertainment that cater to their demographic, they instead want to destroy the kind of entertainment that I like for some inexplicable reason. You don't see me going through and making remakes of old romantic movies or soap operas that they love and changing them to have more explosions, battles, spaceships, action, and scantily clad women into them, and less romance and drama because there's too much toxic femininity in them and not enough male representation. If they enjoy something different to myself, all power to them, but I expect the same in return.

People are different, they like different things, make different choices, and that's not actually a problem that someone needs to solve. That's a result of people having true freedom. I interpret these attempts to force things into movies, games, all entertainment really, as an attempt to undermine our freedom to choose.

in my circles? James Damore, Roseanne Barr are in "my circles"? Could give you plenty of examples of people losing their jobs over this exact same type of "political correctness".
Um hmm, "disturbing a general consensus" you say? Bingo! You hit the nail on the head. Those who dare to break the general consensus of radical feminism and radical positive discrimination, and who dont "get the dirty look" for that, they lose their jobs for that.

Yes it does, just like everything else, but we are talking about the perceived consensus of today and the recent years, not the more distant past.

You are once again chosing to ignore reality and falling into your beloved theoretical dellusions.
"Nowadays", this term is "activated" by the general public that is NOT in the "far right arsenal", in order to point out injustice and abuse committed in the name of "political correctness" or "general consensus" as you like to call it....general consensus of the precious few i might add.
One glaring example: the cases of Quinn Norton and Sarah Jeong.
Sarah Jeong, a twitter fruitcake of "cancel white people" fame, gets hired by New York Times, while a merituous thinker and journalist like Quinn Norton has been rejected due to alleged racism. You only need to check out her work to see she is an anti-racist.

So in your mind the people who invoke this term are populists, racists, neo-fascists and conspirationists...you seem to be disconnected with reality.

The problem is that not all hate speech is sanctioned as such. The #MeToo hate speech, the radical feminism hate speech, the Sarah Jeong flavor of hate speech....those are allowed to pass and are not even categorized as hate speech even though they truly are.
The political correctness that i was talking about only strikes on one side, and "those ordinary people" that you mention are getting fed up with that, and no that doesnt make them far right, just makes them upset.

You wrongly assume that my circles are alt-right, or the way im complaining about political correctness is alt right.
Well for your info im all the way in the left camp, the real left not the feminist and minority subversive "left", which i call the "fake-left".
Personally i strongly dislike both the fake-left and the alt-right, as their excessive struggles are poisoning everything. Even more than the fake-left and the alt-right, i dislike the actual right, as they are not only the most dangerous, but also they are coming out as the winners out of the insufferable fake-left alt-right duels.