An Open Letter to STS on Censorship, Hate Speech and Bigotry

[Ghoul]

Dear STS,

I haven't played this game in a long time. I recently got back into it and played around for a while, rekindled connections with old friends I thought I'd lost forever. It gave me a new chance to look at the wonderful community you have crafted over 8 long years, a robust core of players that have remained loyal to you through everything; but it has also brought to light some decisions you have made that might have made sense in 2013, but are archaic in today's world.

But first, I think a little backstory is necessary to fully capture the magnitude of this issue that might seem trivial at first glance, but on closer inspection reveals flaws so deeply baked into human society, and in particular gaming culture, that it would require years of work on the parts of every member of the gaming community at large, players and developers alike, to come together to attempt to fix this problem that exists at the very bedrock of our society.

Trash talking has long been at the core of every online game. Any game that has a player versus player or co-op mechanic will inevitably have players throwing insults at each other - whether you play competitive shooters, League of Legends, Club Penguin or, yes, Arcane Legends, you will come across trash talking. It's something you come to expect from online gaming; a player behind a keyboard, comfortable in his or her anonymity, will often lose restrictions imposed on them by society; to put it more colorfully, give a man a mask and he shows his true face. While it is sad, it is human nature; and this is not the problem I look to solve today (and indeed, I'm not entirely sure it can be solved, ever, but that's a topic for another day).

Censorship - regardless of whom you ask, it's a controversial topic. Reckless freedom of speech has devastating consequences, but so does depriving an individual of it entirely. It's an issue that isn't restricted to gaming by any means, and strays so far into the realm of the political that I won't attempt to venture very far into this topic, though it is the heart of this issue: I am not here to argue whether censorship is right or wrong - instead, I want to examine what should be censored and what should not: but even this issue is a minefield so I'll be restricting myself to one particular "insult". Whether it opens the discussion further is in your hands.

I want to restrict this discussion, in fact, to the term "gay" which, I would argue, should not cause you to get muted for using it - while it can be, and for decades has been, used as an insult, it also has far more innocuous uses - and if saying "gay marriage" times you out for five minutes, or if you have to type "I'm g@y" when revealing your orientation to your in game friends to avoid being censored - maybe it's time for a change.

The year is 2020. I doubt anyone had homophobic intentions when censoring this word when the code was laid down in 2012 - but it's slightly troubling that saying "lesbian" gives you a "soft censor" - ie hides the "offensive" word with asterisks (which can be disabled by changing your settings) - but saying "gay" mutes you for the whole 5 minutes.

This went on for a little longer than I intended, but it is an issue close to my heart - all of us here know that many children play this game (in fact I was barely a teenager when I started playing AL), and to a young gay child this sort of thing can be very damaging to their self esteem. Many parts of the world are still extremely homophobic, and often the internet can be a person's only outlet to being their true self.

To everyone who had the patience to make it this far, thanks for your time - and I hope that together, one step at a time, we can make at least this little corner of the internet a more accepting place to live in.

(If you want a tl;dr, I'm sorry - a topic like this shouldn't be condensed into one sentence.)