CD Projekt joint CEO Michał Nowakowski has issued a strongly worded response to accusations that the studio “is in a lot of trouble right now” because of “diversity hires,” saying the people peddling such nonsense need to “stop looking for conspiracy theories.”
“Seems we live in times where anyone can record complete nonsense and make a story out of it,” Nowakowski said in response to a post on X by YouTuber Endymion, who has a long history of stridently complaining about diversity and “wokeness” in videogames.
“CDPR talent leaving? We have the lowest rotation of people in recent years. DEI-driven recruitment? We hire based on merit and talent alone, just as we make games driven by artistic vision alone. Why did we choose [Unreal Engine]? Because it enables us to work on our games more efficiently and we remain cutting edge tech-wise. The Witcher 3’s director left? Well, yeah, more than 2 years ago… Now, can we stop looking for conspiracy theories and go back to making cool stuff?”
Is it really worth making this kind of statement regarding the DEI thing? The self-proclaimed “anti-woke” crowd wants you to give their bigotry fuel by playing defense. Then they’re going to get on YouTube and upload another shitty rant with a soyface thumbnail and a 3-word headline.
If you can ban them in your spaces then do so by all means. Do not enter their space if you are an honest person. This is a battle won by persuasive rhetoric, not facts and logic.
If nobody plays defense, they blindly assume they’re right about everything. That’s about it. Like children without an adult to tell them off when they act fussy over nothing.
I think the point is they either assume themselves to be right because no one argued, or because everyone who argued is brainwashed woke-zombie.
So if the result is the same, it may be wiser to skip the arguing part ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Depends what your goal is.
If you are trying to change that persons actions specifically, it likely is a lose lose, because they will make more of the same content about the response.
The goal here isnt to actually stop the youtuber from doing anything. The goal is to offer a different firsthand perspective from inside the company, and I think this message does that.
Now anyone that hears about the initial YouTube video, will also hear about the response, and the average person is likely to believe the studios version over a youtuber.
I think saying nothing would distance the company from its fans to some degree, and putting out some PR spin would backfire immediately.
I think that if replies are rare and spot on, it may be a good PR. But do it every time and it will just be a waste of time without any good results
They’ll do that anyway. They engage only in ideological proclamation, not critical analysis. They think truth is dictated by consensus.
You deal with these people by disenfranchising them and removing their opportunities to gain power, not by engaging them directly in debate. Never engage with an echo chamber if you don’t want the ideology of that echo chamber to infect others like a virus.
You have to mock the liars and the strongmen at least sometimes, because if you don’t they flood the zone with their shit and it just consumes the culture.
It’s not even about persuasive rhetoric. The way this seems to work is they’ll blame some real or imagined failure on whatever group they want to abuse, they will claim victory if whatever target does poorly for whatever reason and if they do well they just move on to the next target.
It’s a fortune teller racket. You don’t engage with it, you mock it sometimes to remind people that it’s absurd and you ignore it otherwise.
In the words of the wise : do NOT feed the trolls.
It certainly made me (an actual consumer) like cdpr more so ig it was worth it.