firstpastthepost: Why would this concern you? It sounds like this literally has no effect on you at all beyond you imagining that a company apologizing for something benign is a tacit approval on their part of a political view you don’t share. That’s a pretty ridiculous stretch and makes you just as bad as your so called social justice warriors for perpetuating false outrage. Maybe, seeing as how it has nothing to actually do with you personally, you should just ignore it. After all every company does this. They aren’t making a political statement. They are trying to be neutral to protect market share.
Hitchno: Well, there's an easy answer to this. Past history. And current history. Victimhood is valuable currency, one that can be cashed in for some people. And for some people this is also used to push agendas that fans don't want. Simply put? People don't want to see yet another good company fall down the same path that's ruined other games, movies, music, culture.
This isn't the slippery slope argument or fallacy, rather it's the fact people have seen multiple companies, organizations, museums, libraries, plays-houses do this just in the last 10 years do this. First the company will make a joke, normal ad, or whatever else. This is followed up by various groups on social media screeching outrage over it. The company then starts responding to this outrage. Depending who the shakedown artist(s) are and how much pull, you'll then start hearing about xyz company hiring on diversity consultants "because of complaints about xyz thing" or "abc thing is cultural appropriation" or whichever.
To average people, the core fan base, this abc/xyz thing is a literal non-issue. But it's very important to the people offended. So important that cultural exchange events are shutdown. Content gets pulled from games. Movies get scrubbed of icons to not offend.
These people will then start telling the people within the company that everyone else is the problem, not the self-offended individuals. You'll then start hearing the insider stories about how story information is passed through curators who "really know the situation and can adjust it to make it not offensive." From there you'll see the creeping advertisements pushing whatever social agenda that's hot. The company will then start being told that "they don't have enough diversity hires" so they need to hire not based on merit, skill, ability. But on equity, sexuality, race, or other points to "raise their social standing and promote this good corporate culture."
Several years down the road, this company is publishing garbage. Injecting the 'hot political message of the day in' and so on. People will start wondering what's happened, and then the accusations that if you don't believe in what they're doing? Well you're a racist, sexist, misogynist, manbaby, dudebro, or whatever term is hot at the time. And in a little while, so-long company and in some cases good-bye franchise. Oh it was never the people pushing this that caused it. The problem is always the fans, who are also unintelligent, regressive, socially backward, against progress, or again whatever hot term is running as well. There will also likely be claims of harassment(which are never shown), claims of misogyny or sexism, 'toxic working environments' and all the rest. Yeah "toxic" is the favorite buzzword of the last few years too.
The problem is that there is a better way of dealing with this than whining. Just don’t buy a product if it has a message you don’t like. It’s not like there’s a lack of gaming options. The OP gave a list of ones he found sufficiently non-sjw. Rather than trying to impose your views on everyone else (the exact thing they are complaining about) they should just let others do as they want. Again this doesn’t actually adversely effect anyone. This is a cycle of bullshit outrage from both sides that makes the whole problem worse.
