On August 20, 2024, Dustborn will release on Steam, PS4/PS5, and Xbox. The €30 game comes from a small studio in Norway and has been supported by financial grants from the European Union and Norway. The action-adventure has become the target of some influencers, who see the embodiment of all evil and wokeness in the single-player game.
Why is Dustborn so hated? Some content creators have identified Dustborn as the root of all evil they oppose. Dustborn is seen as a symbol of excessive political correctness and as an example of a game that bombards players with an exaggerated political message.
In clips, the game is deliberately ridiculed: The large streamer Asmongold has created 3 videos about Dustborn, each receiving between 730,000 and 1.1 million views. In the clips, he shows absurd-looking combat scenes where attacks like “Canceling” and “Triggering” appear (via YouTube).
Some smaller YouTubers have focused on Dustborn and published numerous exceptionally negative videos about the game. It is being covered with similar hatred as the consulting firm Sweet Baby Inc., which is demonized on YouTube in the same way.
The game has hardly any players on Steam, currently only 5 players are online, yet it has been facing significant backlash on social media for months – similar to how Concord, the hero shooter from Sony, has experienced backlash and was also accused of being “woke”.
The man behind the game is a Norwegian who has been making games for 30 years
This is what the developer behind Dustborn says: In an interview with the Norwegian site gamer.no, the head of Red Thread Games talks about the enormous hatred directed towards him and the studio. Ragnar Tørnquist has been working in the gaming industry for 30 years and is one of the leading figures in gaming in Norway.
He says he was completely taken by surprise by the hatred coming from the USA against his game. They had not expected it and did not know how to respond.
In an initial post on social media, they merely asked people to behave and were swept away by a wave of hatred. Since then, they have remained silent on the topic, but that hasn’t helped either.
How does the hatred manifest? The CEO says:
It is easy to ignore what is said in forums or on X. Emails feel a bit more personal, but receiving text messages where someone wishes you death is unsettling.
The most absurd thing he has been accused of was a YouTube video claiming that the CEO wanted to drown babies (via YouTube).
This is completely made up. He obviously does not want to kill babies. But there is no way to take action against such a video, and it is simply a very damaging lie.
He has to ignore it and hope that people are intelligent enough to understand that it is not true.
Dustborn was funded with financial support from Norway and the EU
These are the numbers on Dustborn: The CEO says there are rumors that the game was funded by the “American government”. That is also a lie.
16 people worked on the game, and they received about 1.2 million euros from the Norwegian government and 150,000 euros from EU funding sources. However, the company’s goal is ultimately to become independent from such funding. But at the moment, state support is crucial for the Norwegian gaming industry.
Dustborn is not a financial flop for the company. Although it has not met internal goals, everything is within reason. Many more people play Dustborn than the numbers circulating on the internet suggest.
“One starts to question decisions”
What are the effects of the hatred? The CEO says: The current hatred hinders the creativity of the team. The financial situation is already difficult:
One begins to question decisions regarding character design, narrative, word choice, PR, and even game mechanics. This comes from a greater nervousness about what reactions one might receive. But we will not stop being ourselves.
He himself sees Dustborn as an “exaggerated game that speaks for itself.” It is colorful, inspired by comics, and offers a sarcastic view of the world. Dustborn does not take itself too seriously:
I hope people can see the game and understand that it is an alternative world, which also applies to the story. The game may be a dystopian reflection of the world, but the story is not designed for realism. It is written with humor and exaggeration, and it is very tongue-in-cheek.
Apparently, this wink has completely escaped some influencers.
In recent months, there has been backlash against a number of players who have been identified by people on the internet as “too woke” and are suspected of trying to foist a political message on players. These games often feature non-white women as protagonists: A new action RPG fails at launch on Steam – opponents of the ‘woke company’ Sweet Baby Inc. rejoice
