A Baldur’s Gate 3 mod that deliberately turned one of the game’s female characters into a male has been removed by Nexus Mods. The intent of the mod was to erase a queer romance by turning it into a heterosexual one.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is a game that encourages an astonishing amount of freedom and creativity. Its players are certainly inspired by this encouragement and nowhere is that more clear than in the game’s modding community.
Of course, being the Baldur’s Gate 3 community, one of the first things they did was adjust the size of Half-Orc genitals. Since then though, numerous fantastic mods that vastly improve the gameplay experience have been added like quadrupling your party size or having those party members controlled by AI for convenience.
Unfortunately, a Reddit user discovered a package of mods that the creator insisted “ensures that the gender and sexuality of world NPCs match medieval status quo”. The numerous mods are designed to remove queer characters and characters of color from Baldur’s Gate 3.
A post on the Baldur’s Gate 3 Subreddit sparked massive outrage at this erasure and was chiefly concerned with the ‘Ser Aylin’ mod. The mod in question gender-swapped Dame Aylin and used AI to give her a male voice to disguise her lesbian relationship with Isobel.
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Nexus Mods has responded to the backlash by removing the ‘Ser Alyn’ mod and banning its creator. A Nexus Mods spokesperson said that the ‘Ser Alyn’ mod violated the site’s rules for “appearing to reduce diversity in Baldur’s Gate 3 by taking a same-sex couple and swapping the gender of one of the partners to make them heterosexual.”
“We are for inclusivity, we are for diversity. If we think someone is uploading a mod on our site with the intent to deliberately be against inclusivity and/or diversity then we will take action against it. The same goes for people attempting to troll other users with mods deliberately to cause a rise. We aren’t the authority on what users can and cannot mod. Us removing a mod only means it cannot be found at Nexus Mods, nothing more, nothing less. As a private business, we have a right to choose what content we do and do not want to host on our platform. Respect this right the same way you want respect for your rights.”
An excerpt from Nexus Mods’ response
Most players of Baldur’s Gate 3 don’t seem to take issue with developer Larian Studios’ commitment to include characters with a diverse range of sexual orientation, gender, and racial identity. It has certainly not impeded the game’s massive rise in popularity.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is set for a massive showing at The Game Awards 2023 with eight total nominations including Game of the Year.
