Game news “Totally unacceptable” Elon Musk acts like Elon Musk and attacks Avowed, Obsidian's future RPG
Published on 02/12/2024 at 6:05 p.m.
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Avowed, which will be available exclusively on Xbox and PC, is one of the highly anticipated games of early 2025, developed by the Obsidian Entertainment studio. But even before its release, it already finds itself in the middle of a controversy in which Elon Musk got involved.
A woke game?
Avowed is an RPG type game developed by Obsidian Entertainment, the studio behind the development of The Outer Worlds and South Park among others. Acquired by Microsoft in 2018development of the game began the same year. Whileit will be released on February 18, 2025one of its developers, Dennis Presnell, who notably worked on Fallout and Baldur's Gate, says very confident about the quality of the game. But on the networks, one detail of the game did not go unnoticed: the existence of pronouns.
Indeed, we see in this screenshot that it is possible to choose your pronouns. Mark Kern, a developer who worked for Blizzard during the development of World of Warcraft, created debate on the networks. Nicknamed Grummz on Twitter, he says draw a red line and reject any game that includes pronouns. Elon Musk outbidclaiming that he was “totally unacceptable” than “having pronouns in a fantasy video game”.
A cultural battle
In fact, the controversy over the game originated several months earlier, when Elon Musk considered unacceptable for any video game company to be sexist (against men) and racist (against white people). Matt Hansen, Art Director of Avowedsaid he was motivated by this reaction, and wanting to annoy the billionaire with his game. On Bluesky (social network), he therefore expressed his happiness in the face of the discontent of the South African, whom he had apparently set as his objective. He also did the ironic promotion of the gamesaying that one should not have “afraid of his woke mind virus.” Some began investigating the developer's past, and found a post that they deemed to be problematic. He had stated wanting to help black people work in the video game world, believing that there was too many “old encrusted whites”.
Elon Musk therefore notified Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoftof potential discrimination, while warning that “this will end badly”. Chris Avellone, ancien grand nom d’Obsidianurged anyone who has been refused employment to hire a lawyer specializing in discrimination. More broadly, rumors are circulating now on a radical change of direction within Obsidian and Microsoft, with a “woke culture” which would predominate, or even a supposed “disappearance of white employees for the benefit of unqualified employees”. These allegations, unsourced, are maintained by “anti-woke” activistsof which Elon Musk is a member. In the meantime, the owner of his own video game studiousing AI, to “make video games great again.”
