A recent dossier reveals that many of the developers behind War Mongrels, Hatred and Ancestors Legacy spread far-right ideas and sympathise with neo-Nazi groups.
Ever since their first game, the controversial rampage shooter Hatred, which was indexed in Germany, the Polish developer studio Destructive Creations has repeatedly come under criticism – and not only because of extreme depictions of violence. Some of the developers are also said to have connections to the right-wing scene.
The dossier “Destructive Creations: Between neo-fascism, neo-paganism, anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim racism” for the first time provides detailed evidence of the studio’s relations with right-wing nationalist, transphobic and anti-Semitic organisations. The report is part of research by the initiative “Keinen Pixel den Faschisten!” and was produced in cooperation with the association “Gesicht Zeigen: For a Germany open to the world”.
For the report, among other things, the social media activities, likes, posts and statements as well as images of the developers Cyprian Listowski, Kamil Boczkowski, Maciek Pryc, To Masz, Marcin Kazmierczak and studio head Jaroslaw Zielinski were analysed and placed in the socio-historical context of Poland.
The frightening result: A mesh of anti-Semitic ideas, hatred of trans people, Islamophobia and neo-fascist tendencies. This could also be proven on the basis of Destructive Creations’ game content, they concluded:
Especially the hard core of long-standing decision-makers around CEO Zielinski shares a right-wing extremist worldview and apparently lets this flow into the game design and storytelling of its products.
Blame is evil propaganda
Facebook likes for right-wing nationalist parties, hate comments against women’s rights and the LGBTQ community, motifs of war criminals, scene tattoos with Nazi mybolism and national socialist black metal: the list of findings is long.
In an analysis of the game War Mongrels, the initiative “Keinen Pixel den Faschisten!” (No pixel for the fascists!) makes clear how such a mindset fits in with the supposedly contradictory setting of the tactics game, in which German soldiers become resistance fighters against the regime: According to the makers, it was above all the “evil propaganda” that drew the heroic figures into the conflict.
The report comes to the conclusion: Here, Wehrmacht soldiers are indirectly taken to task, crimes are relativised. “For us, both Nazis and Kommis are enemies,” the studio writes on Discord. “But not everyone in the Red Army was an animal, and that applies just as much to the Wehrmacht. Neither were volunteer armies and we don’t want to condemn anyone who was forced to join them. Especially when these are the stories of our grandfathers.”
The report of “No Pixel to the Fascists!” describes how to purposefully bend the narrative:
“One adopts a highly critical perspective with regard to the Allies, but this is mainly based on whataboutisms. For example, the victors had written history and thus Allied war crimes had been concealed. There was also something to the fear of blacks (!). The image of the Polish population, on the other hand, could not be more positive: There were heroes everywhere and collaborations with the Germans were either forced or gullible people were blinded by propaganda. No mention is made of anti-Semitism (not only, but also deeply rooted in Poland) as an impetus for collaboration, which would of course scratch the image of ‘the Poles’. ”
Male, brutal, white: distorted Middle Ages?
Subtle right-wing codes and nationalist ideas are also found in the medieval strategy game Ancestors Legacy, according to the report.
The dossier states that the game constructs an ahistorical Middle Ages that is entirely in line with right-wing imaginings of the era: shaped by the motif of aggressive white masculinity, an image is drawn of an “Eastern Europe occupied by German troops and turned into a colony”. Ancestors Legacy may seem innocuous on the surface, the dossier says, but:
“Even in its relative subtlety, Ancestors Legacy still serves all the hallmarks of right-wing medieval imagery, which ultimately always ends up in nationalist narratives of the past to justify contemporary national identities.”
Even before researching “No Pixel for the Fascists!” we had decided not to test the real-time tactics game due to the historical portrayal of War Mongrels, which is also problematic from our point of view.
Furthermore, we add a subsequent note in our review for Ancestors Legacy, the rating remains unchanged. We have requested a statement on the dossier of No Pixel the Fascists! from the developers themselves.
