Grand Theft Auto is not any good friend to the queer group

Welcome to the preliminary installment of Video Video games Weekly on Engadget. Count on a brand new story each Monday (sure, we notice immediately is Tuesday), damaged into two components. The primary is an area for brief essays, observations and ramblings about online game developments and associated subjects from me, a reporter who’s coated the business for greater than 13 years. The second accommodates the online game tales from the previous week that it is advisable to learn about, together with some headlines from outdoors of Engadget.

Please take pleasure in — and I am going to see you subsequent week.

I’ve observed a rising sentiment in a few of my favourite queer gaming boards concerning Grand Theft Auto VI, and it’s each making me chuckle and inflicting me deep anxiousness concerning the malleable nature of our shared actuality. When the second trailer for GTA VI dropped on Might 6, one in every of its protagonists, Jason, turned an immediate intercourse image among the many gays, and the thirsty memes began rolling in. This was light-hearted and enjoyable, however on the identical time, the alt-right gaming crowd was freaking out about Jason being too homosexual — despite the fact that, canonically, he’s clearly a straight dude. Queer gamers accused the neo-Nazis of projection, and the memes exalting Jason as a homosexual icon ramped up, till, someplace alongside the best way, it stopped being a joke. I began to see earnest feedback suggesting the GTA franchise was a bastion of inclusion and an outspoken good friend to the LGBT+ group. I noticed queer gamers speak about GTA VI as if it have been going to be a heat and welcoming area, one thing made for us.

And I oop — that’s some severe grand theft gaslighting, mates.

I’m not right here to burst any bubbles, and I sincerely hope that GTA VI presents well-rounded, various characters with considerate storylines. Nevertheless, in the case of queer points, that’s simply not what the collection does. GTA has a historical past of perpetuating dangerous stereotypes about transgender individuals particularly, and GTA V particularly offered a platform for gamers to enact violence in opposition to trans characters.

I in 2020, and on the time I spoke with Dr. Ben Colliver, a lecturer in criminology at Birmingham Metropolis College and the writer of “.” Violence in opposition to trans individuals in the USA has lengthy been acknowledged as an epidemic, and in 2025, the scenario is worse than ever — lawmakers are legalizing transphobia and shutting down entry to gender-affirming care, utilizing trans lives as a political soccer. It’s a foul time for the LGBT+ group to have false mates, which is one motive I cringe once I see individuals rewriting the historical past of GTA.

Ugly stereotypes and focused violence are a part of GTA’s DNA, so the widespread argument right here is that, really, the collection punches in all instructions and meaning it isn’t discriminatory. However, this take doesn’t maintain as much as scrutiny. Dr. Colliver’s evaluation discovered that straight, cis males in GTA video games stay largely unscathed, and characters who signify oppressed teams are sometimes those used as punchlines.

“Largely it’s LGBT individuals, intercourse staff and girls who’re portrayed in a foul method,” Dr. Colliver stated in 2020. “Sometimes, males within the sport conform to virtually these conventional masculine stereotypes that we anticipate of males round violence and aggression.”

The one topic that GTA actually takes significantly is masculinity, and even then it approaches the subject from a primary lens. GTA presents mainstream straight-male energy fantasies with a Michael Bay aptitude and a teenage sense of edginess, and GTA VI appears to be like to be extra of the identical. That’s even with the inclusion of a feminine protagonist — Lucia, who could be very a lot concerned with Jason, who is definitely straight-coded regardless of interesting massively to homosexual males, which I consider was a complete accident on Rockstar’s half.

(And since I can hear your screams from right here: Sure, The Ballad of Homosexual Tony exists and it’s a wonderful piece of DLC for GTA IV centered on a queer character. The factor is, it got here out 16 years in the past — earlier than Rockstar constructed trans violence into GTA V — and despite the fact that it was extremely well-received, the studio has but to return to its blueprint. I discover that truth extra telling than anything.)

GTA is a non-subversive franchise constructed for primary bros, and this truth is barely bolstered by the homogeneity of Rockstar Video games and the complacency of its dad or mum firm, Take-Two Interactive. We don’t have knowledge about queer illustration at Rockstar, however at , ladies composed lower than 12 % of staff within the highest-paid roles. Throughout the studio, ladies’s common hourly pay was 43 % decrease than males’s. In its annual investor report filed this month, to range and inclusion, and deleted any point out of awards the corporate has acquired for supporting LGBT+ staff. These strikes are supposed to appease President Donald Trump, and it’s the precise kind of spineless, bootlicking conduct that the GTA collection is meant to mock.

Personally I really like doing crimes and messing with cops, and because it seems, so do most different video game followers. This mass-appeal ethos has helped make GTA one of many business’s most enduring franchises. Please, simply don’t financial institution on GTA VI being progressive or actively inclusive from a queer standpoint. We don’t want another excuse to be dissatisfied these days.

Greater than that, we are able to’t let the alt-right actuality eat our personal. The individuals complaining about Jason being too homosexual are the identical ones claiming that in her Overwatch 2 Cammy pores and skin — they’re unserious individuals making bad-faith arguments about video games as an artwork kind. Don’t soak up their messaging and don’t interact with their lies. Suppose critically about their angles of assault and, in the meantime, play you wish to. Certainly one of my private latest favorites is , for those who’re on the lookout for a horny, campy place to start out.

The information

Avowed director and longtime Obsidian narrative lead Carrie Patel has joined Evening Faculty, the studio behind the Oxenfree collection, as a sport director. This can be a large get for Evening Faculty and an indication that the staff has some stability in its future. Netflix , earlier than the launch of Oxenfree 2 and as a part of the streaming firm’s large push into online game growth and publishing. Netflix has since closed and , however it appears Evening Faculty is safe and dealing on one thing story-heavy, if Patel’s involvement tells us something.

Lili made historical past in Might as the primary online game to be included in a Cannes Pageant competitors, and it . Lili is a recent, neo-noir interpretation of Macbeth, offered in full-motion video and set on the streets of Iran, that includes webs of presidency corruption and witches who work as hackers. It’s a collaboration between the Royal Shakespeare Firm and iNK Tales, the studio behind the award-winning sport . Lili is already on the competition circuit however it’s nonetheless in growth, and it’s as a consequence of be publicly accessible in or simply after late 2025.

Bungie solely revealed Marathon in April, however the sport is already enduring a rocky pre-launch interval. First, the studio needed to publicly apologize and evaluate all of its Marathon belongings after it was confirmed that the sport’s alpha . Then, dropped a report documenting the present tensions at Bungie, saying morale on the studio was in “free fall” throughout each division. The round Marathon, which is because of land in September, are that its advertising plans have been scuttled utterly.

GeoGuessr will not be included within the Esports World Cup after a fast — and clearly efficient — group blackout. Probably the most prolific GeoGuessr map creators pulled their contributions from the sport to protest its participation within the EWC, “a sportswashing instrument utilized by the federal government of Saudi Arabia to distract from and conceal its horrific human rights document.” Lower than a day after the blackout started, GeoGuessr AB responded by abandoning the occasion, writing, “You — our group — have made it clear that this resolution doesn’t align with what GeoGuessr stands for. So, once you inform us we’ve obtained it improper we take it significantly.”

The FTC was the final remaining voice rallying in opposition to Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, and it’s now been silenced for good. The FTC formally dismissed its case in opposition to Microsoft after shedding its newest attraction earlier this month.

In a cute second of serendipity, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has offered 3.3 million copies in its first 33 days in the marketplace. Should you have been ready for an indication to start out enjoying, this is perhaps it.

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