Game developer Mark Kern has risen to prominence as an opinion leader on platform X in recent months. He primarily criticizes game developers whom he perceives as “too woke” and has gained considerable influence since March 2024. The new BioWare game, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, is especially a thorn in his side. However, in attempting to rant against the game, Kern misses the mark.
What did Mark Kern say? The game developer Mark Kern (formerly of WoW and Firefall) appears on Twitter under the name “Grummz”.
On October 30th, around 9 PM German time, Kern excitedly posted: “LEAK!” BioWare and EA had been caught red-handed. The supposedly leaked review conditions for Dragon Age: The Veilguard required MrMattyPlays to write his review under this NDA.
It was not a conspiracy theory, but the truth.
Kern states: This is “access journalism”; only those who express an opinion approved by EA gain early access to Dragon Age. However, in exchange for access, one must not speak about wokeness in a review of Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Kern judges: That would be terrible and a corrupt system.
What Mark Kern tweets often ends up in the mind of Asmongold shortly thereafter, reaching his hundreds of thousands of viewers:
Every reviewer must write: Return to BioWare’s former glory
This is what the post says: The alleged review guidelines require the reviewer to state that the new Dragon Age is “a return to BioWare’s former strength”. This phrasing frequently appeared in the reviews displayed on Metacritic. The CEO of EA had also tried to establish this narrative.
The reviewer is also prohibited from mentioning transgender characters, OP scars, or woke content.
Additionally, it is recommended to avoid comparisons to God of War (via twitter).
Kern leaves no doubt about the accuracy of the report: This is all crazy. They are shoving their woke agenda
down the players’ throats, and one cannot even talk about it happening.
We can see the cursor
What is the problem with the post? The reaction to Grummz’s post is devastating.
Only 90 minutes after Kern’s post, the person in question directly contradicts him: Matthew Schroder, MrMattyPlays, states: The post is “incredibly wrong”, and this is not the NDA he signed. Not even close (via twitter).
Others openly mock the fact that the cursor is even visible in Grummz’s post. This cannot possibly be a legitimate NDA, but is clearly still an open text document.
Journalist Paul Tassi has written a satirical version of Grummz’s post, in which reviewers who give a 10/10 are promised even $800 and a Dragon Age desk chair, while those who give 8/10 receive only $50 and an Anthem keychain.
Additionally, Tassi’s version of the agreement states: Breaking the agreement with EA results in the death penalty (via twitter).
Opponents of Grummz are reveling in his misstep and claim that the post shows Kern is merely fueling hate to receive attention and make money. He would even invent the things he gets upset about.
How does Kern himself respond? Just one hour later, Grummz already backtracks: Well, the leak
that sounded so great earlier, he actually got from 4Chan, and there is no way to verify whether it is true or not.
After Kern even receives a community note on his post that this is fake news, everything suddenly sounds very different.
He only posted a rumor that turned out to be false. Sometimes rumors are simply wrong. However, he leaves it up because he does not hide his mistakes.
He thanks his community, which helped him recognize the mistake. He presents it in such a way that it was his community that identified the error, rather than his declared opponents who exposed him. They assure him that he must, with all due respect, be a complete idiot to have believed that at any point.
Kern assures that he will make more effort to verify his information in the future. Long before the release, Mark Kern and Asmongold had developed an opinion on Dragon Age: The Veilguard and identified it as a new object of critique: Everyone loves the new Dragon Age, but two opinion leaders grouse: “Woker than you think”
