Overview
Godot Engine Blocking Controversy refers to a controversy surrounding the community manager for the game engine Godot blocking users on X / Twitter and, reportedly, GitHub over negative reactions to a social media post in support of indie games with LGBTQ+ and “woke” themes. The blocking became a subject of viral discussions on X and Reddit in late September 2024, with the hashtag #Wokot used by posters to refer to it.
Background
On September 24th, 2024, an indie video game developer posted footage from the upcoming Windstorm: The Legend of Khiimori on X[1] / Twitter, revealing that it was built using Unreal Engine 5. In the X[2] thread, user @kryztofcheski wrote, “Woke studios always use pre-built engines to make games because they can’t build their own engines.” In the following days, several X[3] users quote posted the post, mocking the presumption that gaming engines could be “woke” (example post shown below).
Natalie Spitzel @nat_the_dev Sorry fellow devs I guess game engines are Woke™ kryztofjønsøn @kryztofcheski • Sep 24 Replying to @AfterWarPlantX @Malice DaFirenze and @GorkaGames It makes sense doesn’t it? Woke studios always use pre built engines to make games because they can’t build their own engines. 1:22 PM ⚫ Sep 26, 2024 54.2K Views
On September 27th, the official X[4] / Twitter account for Godot Engine, run by a community manager, made a post referencing @kryztofcheski’s post, calling for indie developers to showcase their “woke” game built using the engine. The post (shown below) garnered over 1.7 million views, 2,000 reposts and 16,000 likes in three days.
Godot Engine @godotengine Apparently game engines are woke now? Well then, we won’t complain Show us your #Wokot games below 9:21 AM Sep 27, 2024 · 1.7M Views
In the following hours, Godot Engine blocked several developers and other users who replied to the post with criticisms. For example, on September 27th, 2024, developer funnygamedev reported being blocked on X[5] by the Godot Engine X account after asking them to focus on fixing and supporting Bitmap fonts (post shown below). On September 28th, indie developer and pixel artist @Cosmic_Scr wrote on X[6] that they were blocked by Godot Engine on X after replying with Godot Engine creator Juan Linietsky’s quote “I deeply believe that any political discussion that puts labels to a group of people is one that should not have started.” On September 28th, 2024, Godot Engine backer Starkium reported that they were blocked on X[7] by the account over a comment. Developer @dev_bonnie made a post about being blocked by Godot Engine on X,[15] writing, “Erm friendly fire” and pointing out that they are bisexual.
10.0 Godot Engine @godotengine. Sep 27 Apparently game engines are woke now? Well then, we won’t complain Show us your #Wokot games below → 2.7K 172K 15K 1.7M ☐ 1 funnygamedev (mouse) @funnygamedev Sep 27 Can you focus on fixing/supporting Bitmap fonts to properly import into your engine first instead of doing this sort of thing its delaying my project a lot having to try to bugfix this with the little documentation you have for this. Q41 1753 1.7K Ill 46K funnygamedev (mouse) @funnygamedev blocking me for this really mild criticism for something that should be in a 2D engine a while now is making me consider switching to a different engine. There’s a proper use of resources and it should be done to fix the stuff you have in there, not adding new things. Godot Engine @godotengine BENA 6 200 You’re blocked You can’t follow or see @godotengine’s posts. Learn more 5:48 PM · Sep 27, 2024 899 Views
On September 29th, indie developer Anthony Waldsmith wrote on X[8] that he has been blocked by Godot Engine on the developer platform GitHub (post shown below).
Anyone that uses “woke” unironically is not someone I will ever take seriously. Criticizing someone for having awareness of reality is peak modern day anti-intellectualism.
… do you actually believe this worth posting? The only thing they’ve done is give the organization a generic “R” logo, there’s literally zero changes between the “fork” and godot
I see this as political discourse. I can now look at whoever started and starred the fork and unquestionably categorize them as people not worth interacting with.
This whole mess has flooded my youtube feed with people self reporting. If they want an anti-woke version of Godot just so when they publish their bigoted games we can SEE that they are bigoted games, that’s perfectly fine by me. The trash that takes itself out is best.
What recent events? People being weidly offended by “woke-ot” and the unnoficial community mod who apologized for being shitty years ago, or is there something new I missed?
The linked Github doesn’t have any information on why it was forked. The readme hasn’t been updated at all to say anything about why this should be used over normal godot.
As far as I can tell, it’s what you suggested. I don’t really care about a fork because of a rogue community manager. Their Foundation apologized, and I suspect they’ll try to do better.
A single instance does not a pattern make.
ETA: and by “rogue,” I mean someone who acts on their own apart from discussing with the team, but still represents them as if they did. I think she was justified to block some of those trolls, but she was a bit overzealous, blocking LGBTQ folks in the process.
Either way, trans rights are human rights. Fuck this fork.
What recent events? Why don’t you tell us what these recent events are? Would you, perhaps, care to expand on what these recent events might be? Because it seems like if you’re crying about that, then maybe you’re not a nice person.
That just sounds like any normal day on Twitter. I feel bad for the community managers that still have to put up with that dumpster fire of a platform. This little flame war does nothing to my impression of Godot engine. To be honest I’ve been more worried about reports of rampant bullying.
Godot is WOKE and queerdo indie devs are using it to make WOKE games because they are UNCREATIVE HACKS who can’t into game engine thats why WE FORKED GODOT AND CHANGED ONE LETTER
I think it’s petty to not play a game just because of the engine it’s written in…
I think I may have to make an exception to that rule for this. :P
(Trans rights are human rights, btw)
Edit: … Wait, hang on. Isn’t the notion of using a game engine at all “woke” in itself? Like, isn’t that the entire thing that started this whole thing?
How is using a game engine “woke?” I feel like I’m missing something about either gamedev history or yet another new meaning of “woke” 🤔
Edit: NEVERMIND I missed a bit in the wall of text 😅 Sorries. I’ll just, uh… hide over here now 😶🌫️
Edit edit: Actually, no, fuck that. “Can’t make their own engines” is incredibly asinine. It takes huge amounts of effort to make a half-decent engine and even established studios are (CDPR??) or should be (Bethesda!) switching to engines built by organizations ostensibly dedicated to making engines and making them well. These bellends have created a kind of counter-productive elitism that was ridiculous decades ago, all to excuse their bigotry.
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Is this just an anti-woke fork? That’s kinda sad
Anyone that uses “woke” unironically is not someone I will ever take seriously. Criticizing someone for having awareness of reality is peak modern day anti-intellectualism.
Based
also lmao your instance name
Based and orcapilled.
Thanks! I’m never getting rid of this URL.
… do you actually believe this worth posting? The only thing they’ve done is give the organization a generic “R” logo, there’s literally zero changes between the “fork” and godot
Also:
Seems like OP just wants to give these bigoted shitstains more of a platform
I’m torn, because this is useless, but also I’d quite like them up high on a platform for everyone to point and laugh at.
I see this as political discourse. I can now look at whoever started and starred the fork and unquestionably categorize them as people not worth interacting with.
This whole mess has flooded my youtube feed with people self reporting. If they want an anti-woke version of Godot just so when they publish their bigoted games we can SEE that they are bigoted games, that’s perfectly fine by me. The trash that takes itself out is best.
Good luck getting open source maintainers that aren’t woke. We’re all queer down here!
What recent events? People being weidly offended by “woke-ot” and the unnoficial community mod who apologized for being shitty years ago, or is there something new I missed?
The linked Github doesn’t have any information on why it was forked. The readme hasn’t been updated at all to say anything about why this should be used over normal godot.
Just the gamer chud brigade’s daily controversy
As far as I can tell, it’s what you suggested. I don’t really care about a fork because of a rogue community manager. Their Foundation apologized, and I suspect they’ll try to do better.
A single instance does not a pattern make.
ETA: and by “rogue,” I mean someone who acts on their own apart from discussing with the team, but still represents them as if they did. I think she was justified to block some of those trolls, but she was a bit overzealous, blocking LGBTQ folks in the process.
Either way, trans rights are human rights. Fuck this fork.
Out of the loop, what events?Thanks for the context. Anti woke chuds getting sad about a tongue in cheek tweet to promote queer gamedevs.
As always, freedom of speech != right to attention. Someone blocking you is just as much freedom of speech as you voicing your hatred.
I’m really confused by the word “woke” now.
It feels like it’s become a catch-all for anything that isn’t right wing? It’s like a not so subtle dog whistle.
Has it ever been something else? Nobody using “woke” seriously has ever been able to define it.
I felt like I did hear some people use it in a more “legitimate” or “good faith” way around the time it first was becoming a more commonly used word.
But then it seemed it quickly just became…this lol. Aside from those couple occurrences years ago, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone use it IRL.
A few minutes ago I posted a link to a video (not mine) about every game being woke now (spoiler: its funny): https://youtu.be/mZH8Fh29Wxc (and for discussion the topic https://beehaw.org/post/16369830)
What recent events? Why don’t you tell us what these recent events are? Would you, perhaps, care to expand on what these recent events might be? Because it seems like if you’re crying about that, then maybe you’re not a nice person.
That just sounds like any normal day on Twitter. I feel bad for the community managers that still have to put up with that dumpster fire of a platform. This little flame war does nothing to my impression of Godot engine. To be honest I’ve been more worried about reports of rampant bullying.
Godot is WOKE and queerdo indie devs are using it to make WOKE games because they are UNCREATIVE HACKS who can’t into game engine thats why WE FORKED GODOT AND CHANGED ONE LETTER
Technically changed two letters. Thats what makes them innovator auteur geniuses.
Two letters. 100% more effective than 1 letter.
Apparently everything is woke now. Engines are woke. Games are woke. Music is woke. Shows & movies are woke. Eating & drinking is woke. Breathing is woke. It’s all woke. WOKE woke WOKE woke WOKE woke WOKE woke WOKE woke WOKE woke WOKE woke WOKE woke WOKE woke WOKE woke WOKE woke WOKE woke WOKE woke WOKE woke WOKE woke WOKE woke WOKE woke WOKE woke WoKe wOkE WoKe wOkE WoKe wOkE WoKe wOkE WoKe wOkE WoKe wOkE WoKe wOkE WoKe wOkE WoKe wOkE WoKe wOkE WoKe wOkE WoKe wOkE WoKe wOkE WoKe wOkE WoKe wOkE WoKe wOkE.
I think it’s petty to not play a game just because of the engine it’s written in…
I think I may have to make an exception to that rule for this. :P
(Trans rights are human rights, btw)
Edit: … Wait, hang on. Isn’t the notion of using a game engine at all “woke” in itself? Like, isn’t that the entire thing that started this whole thing?
I guess stealing the hard work of “the woke” is based af or something
How is using a game engine “woke?” I feel like I’m missing something about either gamedev history or yet another new meaning of “woke” 🤔
Edit: NEVERMIND I missed a bit in the wall of text 😅 Sorries. I’ll just, uh… hide over here now 😶🌫️
Edit edit: Actually, no, fuck that. “Can’t make their own engines” is incredibly asinine. It takes huge amounts of effort to make a half-decent engine and even established studios are (CDPR??) or should be (Bethesda!) switching to engines built by organizations ostensibly dedicated to making engines and making them well. These bellends have created a kind of counter-productive elitism that was ridiculous decades ago, all to excuse their bigotry.
No, um you see…uh…shit…
What the honest fuck are you talking about?
@masterspace @sirico I can only guess the anti woke nazis want to “take politics out” of games after godot dared acknowledge marginalized game creators
Lmao not even the banner in the github has changed
They have said there first release is this Friday. So I would expect it all to be updated then
Inb4 it’s the same logo but red, and with the same description but with the added line, “Now anti-woke.”
At least it will be easy to tell which devs support human rights and which ones are pieces of shit.