Editing Rimworld (section)

==Controversies==

Yup, a game like this isn't immune to skub. For a while it was banned in Australia, and could not bought there legally any more "due to depictions of matters of sex (btw only Rimjobworld mod has sex), [[drug]] misuse or addiction, crime, cruelty, violence or revolting or abhorrent phenomena in such a way that they offend against the standards of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults." That's just how fucking <i>good</i> it is. Fortunately for us, the developers were able to negotiate with Australia and bring it back for sale.

The most ''likely'' reason was the use of in-game drugs, which are pretty well modeled all things considered. In retrospect it's hard to see what the fuck the problem was: they ''do'' provide temporary bonuses but saddle your colonists with health and other issues (like tolerance and addiction) down the line. Use of hard and [[Dark_Eldar|combat drugs]] can (and almost always will) make life nasty brutish and short. Even "Smokeleaf", the game's hybrid analogue to marijuana and tobacco, can potentially result in asthma or even lung cancer if smoked too often, and stoned pawns having piss-poor productivity, using too much food, [[FATAL|fainting in really inopportune moments such as in a freezer or near a fire]] or during a raid, and even in rare cases [[What|starve to death immediately]]. TLDR; If the game sees you using drugs to try to get around a shitty life for your colonists, it will punish you for it. Even if you're using drugs for noble reasons (namely boosting your best surgeon's dexterity with combat stims to increase the odds of pulling off a difficult surgery, or cheering up a really depressed patient with a joint or beer), you have to weigh the risk of complications down the line, ''especially'' if the colonist in question is quite old and/or missing an organ or two, with potential death if the liver or kidneys are damaged especially.

Unfortunately, from Australia's perspective, the "temporary bonuses" bit caused them to jump the gun and kick the game out. This was not the first time Australia has complained over drug use in games, as [[Fallout#Fallout_3|Fallout 3]] also came under fire in Oz for depicting Morphine usage, and was only granted access when the offending drug was relabeled Med-X prior to release, a name that stuck in later releases. In fact, the Rimworld community used the Fallout 3 example, among other games Australia blocked because of drug usage, to justify a re-classification. [[Just As Planned|It worked]], and Rimworld went from RC (Refused Classification, a de facto ban) to R18+.

And not the first time Rimworld has had controversy. Following its first surge in popularity, certain “sites and blogs” found aspects of it problematic (by which we mean they tried to advance their politics and own popularity by criticising The Popular Thing). Thankfully, it completely failed to generate a [[Satanic_Panic|moral panic]] or its typical counter-backlash. Nobody gave a shit.
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But the actual reason is interesting. To explain a bit: Rimworld has a romance/relationships mechanism, its rewards being mood bonuses that can help a colonist through hard times without cracking. Tynan added gay, bisexual and asexual traits to the mix, more to drive story development than to be politically correct. Of course, this is never enough for [[SJW|some people]], but not having more fringe human sexualities wasn’t what people objected to, for once.

Instead it may be unintentional [[Ferrus_Manus|Darwinism]]. Colonies in Rimworld grow mainly by one mechanism: kidnapping people and <s>brainwashing</s> convincing them in prison to join your colony. Mostly this is enemy pawns injured and captured during raids, resulting in a quick check of the injured pawn’s profile and if they aren’t worth keeping, then <s>swipe left</s> leave them to bleed out or cut their throats there and then. After all, taking too many prisoners or slaves at once (even if you have space) increases the odds of jailbreaks, and last thing you need is to be tied down with new colonists who are mental break bait for hard-pressed colonies for whom [[Iron_Hands|weakness can mean death]]. In a way this uncompromising harshness models well the struggle to survive on an unforgiving world. <s>Or dating on Tinder.</s>

Anyway, the gay trait was usually considered one of the weaker ones, not because of [[Nazi|moral objections]], but because a gay pawn may unsuccessfully try to woo straight members of his/her own sex and repeatedly fail, getting growing mood penalties and spreading them to the awkwardly embarrassed woo-ees. (This behaviour was toned down in later builds.)  Even that aside, the thought was, if you don’t have another gay colonist for them to pair up with for nice lovin’ bonuses, they probably aren’t worth keeping, as it may be a while before you find another decent “recruit” who happens also to have the gay/bisexual trait. 

It’s not just the poor gays who get this treatment, of course. Anyone too old, ugly, unhealthy, or with undesirable traits but no essential skills to balance them usually unceremoniously gets [[BLAM|the chop]]. You can choose the difficult but moral option when playing it yourself, but the game’s mechanics - i.e. it being a unforgiving battle for survival - are against you if you do. Tynan probably didn’t mean the game to end up promoting ableism, homophobia or ageism. You can imagine how he wanted it to play out: lonely gay pawn, after days spent wet in dark and cold finally leaves colony to seek romance elsewhere after being mauled by a chinchilla. That’s a story. This isn’t how we play games though. [[/pol/|Maybe there is an inner fascist in all of us.]]

Even though the clickbait inquisition [[Fail|quickly abated]], it had an effect on Tynan. With ideoligion, while introducing polygynous marriages/relationships, sex only within the bonds of marriage (M’Lady) and standards of dress for each gender, he chose to stay well away from banning or penalising gay marriages or sex under any ideoligion even though this is pretty much a big thing in real-world religions. It probably wasn't worth giving [[SJW|political]] [[/pol/|militants]] ammunition given that most players wouldn't develop stories from it anyway: it must be said that the other time apart from lovin' bonuses most players much care about the gender of pawns is when a psychic drone tuned to that gender is trying to drive them [[Dwarf_Fortress|murderously insane]].

TLDR; a game is a fucking game, not a serious attempt to model human socio-sexual norms. If you don’t like a mechanism, mod it out or don’t play the game. But be sure that if you’re being real-life offended or allowing yourself to be mentally moulded by a game where the sex animation is literally floating cartoon lovehearts and you can make someone your lover by impressing them about knowledge of kumquats, then you may just have bigger issues.
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