Johann Pilestedt, the Creative Director for Arrowhead Game Studios and Helldivers 2, virtue signaled against the DEI agenda that its publisher Sony embraces.
In a post ahead of the New Year, Pilestedt asked his followers on X, “With 10 minutes to 2025. What are your expectations and desires for what the next Arrowhead game will be? I am working on the high concept, but I would love to hear your speculation.”
One individual responded, “Never add dei to your games.”
Pilestedt replied, “If it doesnt add to the game experience, it detracts. And games should be a pure pursuit of amazing moments.”
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He was then asked by another user, “How would DEI have benefited Helldivers 2?”
Pilestedt responded, “I don't like labels. But mankind is united in its extreme xenophobia on Super Earth. #Inclusion so, maybe that’s DEI?”
“I really don't care. Make good games, don't make a contemporary political statement,” he concluded.
While Pilestedt’s comments appear to be good on the surface, when you look beneath it, it is apparent that they are just a virtue signal and empty.
To elucidate that point, gamer Gigabear noted that he was banned from the Helldivers 2 Discord server and speculated the reason why was due to his support of former World of Warcraft Team Lead Mark Kern. He recently attempted to appeal the ban, but was denied.
He detailed on X, “I appealed my Helldivers 2 Discord ban. While I was never communicated with at all, I'm pretty sure I can guess the reason for it. I only said like two things which were totally innocuous but my Nickname while doing so was ‘Gigabear, Grummz Superfan.’ I of course don't see how that's an issue, but if it were, simply asking me to change it would have been a very quick fix.”
In a subsequent post, he made it clear his appeal was denied. He wrote, “They must really hate Grummz. Sad.”
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Furthermore, Pilestedt’s claim that his game is not trying to send a contemporary political statement is disputed by his own employees.
Case in point, the Helldivers 2 Community Manager Katherine Baskin declared back in March that the game “is pretty woke.”
She wrote on X, “plus helldivers is pretty woke dog. game was made by a lot of lgbtq and brown people and black people and women and it’s a big satire of jingoism.”
She added, “it amuses me they don’t know that super earth is bad! it also explains a lot about the world at present.”
Furthermore, Baskin also claimed she and her team were banning individuals they deemed bigots.
She wrote, “we only ban the bigots – transphobes, homophobes, racists, etc. are not welcome in our community.”
“We had to restrict the topics in the HD2 general chats for a while because it was triggering massive waves of hatespeech which our staff was struggling with emotionally,” she added.
In June 2024, a moderator went on a rant about gender identity not being political and began banning players using vomit emojis to react to the “contemporary political statement.”
The moderator stated, “Gender identity is not politics it’s literally someone’s identity. Here in the HD2 server we have a 0 tolerance policy on any sort of bigotry or hate.The topic of gender identity especially this month is not one that’s not allowed. What isn’t allowed is all the negativity towards people trying to celebrate who they are.”
The mod continued, “If you don’t have anything nice to say don’t say it at all. Also in the same vein if you are attempting to bait people by flagrantly injecting your sexuality into the convo just to start fights that will also result in a time out. Now it’s time to move the topic along because it’s very clear right now it’s not one we can have civilly.”
The moderator then announced the ban of anyone using a vomit emoji to reject this evil agenda.
“if you wanna go ahead and vomit react to peoples art that they put hours, days, even weeks or months into im going to give you a 24 hour timeout. It’s so rude. It costs nothing to literally not be a jerk,” the mod stated.
In another message the moderator stated, “This is also a reminder that if you try to reply to me in here you can’t because there’s no typing in here. Everyone reacting to my post with a clown emoji is also lining up for a timeout. Keep going you’re making my life easy.”
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An alleged handbook for the game’s community managers also instructed moderators to ban players opposed to identity politics being injected into the game.
Grummz shared a screenshot to X, which stated, “A new user declares that ‘identity politics’ have no place in video games, either Helldivers 2 or some other franchise.”
It then details, “Outcome: Immediate ban. This is a direct violation of Rule #1 in our server. ‘Identity politics’ is code for marginalized groups, like POC and transgender people.”
On top of all of this, Sony, the publisher of Helldivers 2, publicly embraces the DEI agenda and states that it is “encoded in our DNA.”
The company’s website has an entire page dedicated to the agenda. It states, “Respecting employees with diverse backgrounds and perspectives stimulates innovation and drives our creation of social value. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion are encoded in our DNA and shape a vibrant corporate culture. We continue to grow as a team of individuals with one goal: to fill the world with emotion.”
What do you make of Pilestedt’s comments?
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"We continue to grow as a team of individuals with one goal: to fill the world with emotion."
...not truth or goodness or friendship or creativity or even pleasure...just emotion (just not you ignorant bigoted plebs' emotions!). What could possibly go wrong?
I don't know that I'd call that virtue signaling. He answered a question honestly, and his answer accords with real wisdom. So it's more like common sense.