This Marvel’s Spider-Man mod is banned for homophobia

As soon as a PC port takes place, budding players and developers rush to create what are called mods, i.e. a modification of the gameplay or the visual of a game, to make it more pretty, or funnier most of the time. Completely optional, delusional modes can easily be found on sites such as NexusMods or ModDB, very famous in the industry.

However, some changes are unwelcome. We had already seen it with the mod of Cyberpunk 2077 which allowed you to sleep virtually with the character of Keanu Reeves. This time it’s Marvel’s Spiderman which attracts the wrath of the two aforementioned sites, because of a particularly intolerant mod. Indeed, a user took the opportunity to replace all pride flags with American flags.

Action reaction

To do this, the user simply reused the models of blue, white and red flags already present in the game. A modification which is not without consequences, especially when the user in question declares that the flags of the LGBTQIA+ community are “stupid“. Following complaints, the mod has therefore been removed from all platforms and the player was simply banned. A NexusMods spokesperson comments on the situation:

“It was very clearly deliberately made to be a troll mod. The fact that the user needed to fabricate a secondary account like a coward to download the mod shows his intent to troll and he knew he wouldn’t be allowed to do so. If he hadn’t been a coward and used his main account instead, we would have just deleted the mod and told him we didn’t want to host him, only banning him if he downloaded it again after being properly warned.

The creation of the secondary account made it possible to remove all doubts and to make a very easy decision for us. […] If our policy bothers you, if we violated a moral code of conduct as a business that you cannot accept, delete your account.”

A unanimous decision for the sake of inclusivity

At least the message has the merit of being clear. For its part, ModDB sends a slightly more watered-down message, but still in the same direction. Content that offends a certain community must be removed from the platform so as not to show solidarity with any discrimination. On Twitter, the company confirms:

“We have removed the content and banned the users. ModDB is an inclusive environment for all and we do not allow targeting of marginalized groups. Our content moderation is largely automated, but where identified, we have a zero-tolerance policy for this type of content.”

Hi! We have removed the content and banned the users. ModDB is an inclusive environment for all and we do not allow targeting of marginalized groups. Our content moderation is largely automated but where identified we have a zero tolerance policy for this type of content. https://t.co/0leqjUxqJD

— ModDB (@ModDB) August 17, 2022