Grummz Calls Out Video Game Community Managers

Video Games

The war on gamers continues, as fought by the video game industry that needs their money to survive. Grummz, the X account and online handle of former Blizzard producer Mark Kern, has been highlighting the disgusting behavior of various video game community managers who are attacking gamers based on their race and sex. Here are a few highlights.

First is a community manager from Playtonic Games, a British developer that makes games like Yooka-Laylee, Corponation, and Demon Turf:

The Community Manager for @PlaytonicGames hates white men and Asians.

Why do game companies keep hiring Community Managers like this? pic.twitter.com/Ney9lO4vL4

— Grummz (@Grummz) April 4, 2024

This one is a community manager for Compulsion Games, the developer of South of Midnight (which, apparently, was consulted on by Sweet Baby Inc.; let’s all sit here and be shocked), We Happy Few, and Contrast:

Community Manager for @CompulsionGames protected her account, but internet sleuths have found more of her openly racist tweets.

Compulsion Games is working on South of Midnight, a Sweet Baby Inc. game and has taken no action and made no comment on this. pic.twitter.com/8IHKY4z91T

— Grummz (@Grummz) April 4, 2024

This entry comes from an X user called Kooks, who responded to one of Grummz’s posts with this example. It’s a big one, too, because she is the community manager for Ubisoft, the developer behind many major video games, like Assassin’s Creed, Prince of Persia, and some Star Wars and Tom Clancy games:

Here's another woke community manager that I found yesterday (working on Star Wars Outlaws and Avatar Frontiers Of Pandora), with her LinkedIn page where she wrote down all of her responsibilities.

Confirms everything Grummz just stated. pic.twitter.com/izI3x7pg5d

— Kooks (@Kooks12_) April 6, 2024

To understand how important this – and how monumentally stupid – this is, read Grummz’s description of what a community manager does:

What do Community Managers (CMs) do and why they actually matter.

It’s simple. A community manager sits at the boundary of the dev team and gamers and thus holds the MOST power in how a game’s community is shaped and policed. A DEI authoritarian activists dream!

I get asked…

— Grummz (@Grummz) April 6, 2024

For a position like this, you want a real people person, somebody who can make sure everyone is having fun and that gamers want to play whatever game the community centers around, and who knows how to spot and ban people who legitimately cause trouble (actual trouble, not “Stellar Blade looks cool” trouble). You need people who can balance fun with necessary rules (no blatant racism or harassment) but also someone who can get a real sense of who is playing the game and what they want from it. You don’t want obnoxious social justice nuts who expound on how much they hate entire races of people and turn normal gamers off of whatever game they represent and who have a preferred vision for who is playing the game instead of a willingness to observe who is actually playing the game.

And that’s a failing of the companies more than anyone else. How dumb do you have to be to hire these people to deal with your customers? Even if you want to have DEI initiatives in your company, the place for that isn’t someone who interacts with the public and is supposed to measure who your customers are and what they want. That objective is at odds with manufacturing a preferred customer base; they’re just going to chase away people who play the game and want to give feedback. It shouldn’t be hard to weed them out when you’re hiring, either; it’s not like these people make their opinions a secret.

Grummz also has a suggestion for how to combat these kinds of community managers:

Here is where you can make a difference with DEI in gaming:

If you see DEI in your game's community manager, contact (politely)the company and tell them you do not want political activism in game forums, game representatives, and moderators.

CMs need to be neutral.

— Grummz (@Grummz) April 6, 2024