Paradox pulls Stellaris mod that removed game’s racial diversity

The makers of PC strategy title Stellaris have taken action against a mod that appeared to push a white supremacist agenda.

The mod in question removed the game’s rich mix of cultural and racial characters and replaced them with an all-white cast. Paradox has said that while it was uncomfortable with the content from the off, it may have let it stand were it not for the racist rhetoric that had formed around it from elements of the community.

This particular mod had several disturbing elements in it’s public description which we do not want to have clearly displayed on our product page however,” a community manager initially wrote at a point where Paradox had chosen only to remove comments and not the content itself. Our job is to make computer games, not push political agendas. This is why we removed some political proclamations being made in the description field on our workshop page.”

However, the increased intensity of the racist support eventually led to its complete removal.

We saw the mod, thought it wasn’t in very good taste, but let it remain. Then the creator of the mod decided to update the description of the mod to promote an ‘agenda’ not related to computer games at all, and this was being clearly displayed on our product page,” the community manager added, pointing out the ongoing hypocrisy of the flawed ‘political agenda’ argument. We decided it was a step too far and removed it.”

Paradox COO Susana Meza Graham later chipped in to try and calm what quickly became a very heated situation.

We have a few rules of conduct that have been in effect for the better part of a decade where racial slurs, among other things, are not allowed,” she added. We interpreted this particular mod as breaking those rules of conduct, however it would appear that the comments surrounding the mod, rather than the mod itself, were the biggest problem.

We welcome everyone to create all kind of mods for us as long as they comply with our rules of conduct and we expect our modders to help us keep the comment sections free of any racial slurs or other things that do not comply with these same codes.”

Sadly, Paradox continues to come under attack for removing the racist content. Confronting racism is not about censorship and is not about political agendas – it’s about decency, the intolerance of which appears to have become an agenda of its own.