As the gaming community debates the inclusion of pronouns in Starfield, Nexus Mods swiftly bans a mod attempting to remove them, drawing both support and criticism.
Popular modding website Nexus Mods has taken a firm stance against a controversial mod that aimed to remove pronoun options from Bethesda’s space exploration game, Starfield. Despite facing backlash from a segment of the gaming community, Nexus Mods remains unapologetic about its decision.
The inclusion of pronouns in Starfield’s character-creation process became a contentious issue shortly after the game’s release. One streamer’s rant on the matter went viral on Twitter, where they expressed frustration about the immersion-breaking nature of the pronoun selection: “I love nothing more than being dragged out at every f**king conceivable opportunity so that you can f**king ‘current day’ us!”
This outburst prompted other prominent streamers like Hasan to weigh in on the debate. Hasan pointed out that there were more pressing issues with the game, like its confusing UI or the lackluster main quest, rather than the inclusion of pronouns.
In response to the ongoing debate, a modder took it upon themselves to create a feature that removed the pronoun selection from Starfield’s character creation process.
However, this mod didn’t entirely remove pronouns. Instead, it only removed the “he/him” and “she/her” options, causing the game to default to “they/them” pronoun, as one Redditor pointed out. This oversight effectively made characters using the mod non-binary.
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When asked about the decision to remove the mod, Nexus Mods told 404 Media, “Hosting this mod was not for us and it is certainly within our rights not to host content on our platform.
“It’s not a ‘political statement’ or an ‘alignment to one side or the other in the culture war’. We stand for diversity and inclusion in our community and the removal of diversity, while appealing to many, does not promote a positive modding community.”
Y'all. Apparently some angry modder made a mod to remove pronouns from Starfield.Except…They only removed he/him and she/her, making anyone who downloaded it default to they/them.Whoops!(As of this morning, the mod has been taken down from Nexus Mod Manager) pic.twitter.com/PwbLimwFCC
— Erin Reed (@ErinInTheMorn) September 17, 2023
This isn’t the first time Nexus Mods has taken such a stance. They previously removed a mod that took out the Pride flag from Spider-Man Remastered. Their actions, while celebrated by many, have also drawn criticism. Some users argue that the platform is practicing censorship, especially given that it hosts mods with explicit content.
However, Nexus Mods remains undeterred by the criticism. As they told 404 Media, “A reinforcement that this has been the best course of action has been some of the hatred, vitriol, and threats of violence coming from a very, very small minority of the community.”
“Frankly, we are not sad to see them go.”
