Happy Wednesday, gaming lovelies! Cool weather here in the Northeast comes with dreams of hot cocoa and chilly nights filled with gaming and my D&D group resurfacing after hoarding every warm minute of our six weeks of summer. What fall game rituals do you find yourself slipping back into? I’d love to hear them!

Say What? Gears 5 has In-Game Pride Flags Galore

Going above and beyond the rainbow, the folks at The Coalition have included not one but 19 LGBTQ+ Pride flags in the new Gears 5 game. Banners are available to be flown in multiplayer mode. The effort at inclusion is generating internet buzz about the game and fans lost no time spreading the good word.

Will Valve’s Anything-Goes Game Policy Ever be Consistent? 

Some days it feels like Valve will never escape the “c” word—that’s c for censorship if you haven’t been following along. Last year, the digital game platform announced a hands-off approach to games on its platform, in theory allowing games with any content that’s not illegal or “trolling.” What has the folks up in arms is that the company doesn’t appear to enforce that policy in a consistent, measurable way.

Last week, the company made waves with its removal of an erotic visual novel, Taimanin Asagi. By all accounts, the title has abhorrent content that would warrant a long list of content warnings. Because Steam’s guidelines for what is or isn’t allowed under the terms of “illegal” and “trolling,” it’s hard to say whether even something as controversial as Taimanin Asagi truly fits within their allowances. Developers rely on healthy Steam release for a game’s success, which is one reason why the game being pulled from the storefront has caused such a stir—which of Taimanin Asagi‘s disturbing features triggered the removal, and which did not?

Other News You Can Use

• Hasbro to phase out plastic from game packaging
• 2019 Indiecade nominees announced 
• Food for thought: can gameification foster creativity in the workplace?

Brenda Noiseux

Community builder, artist, convention organizer, gamer, geek writer Women Write About Comics and Sidequest. Product Maven at Almost a Game. Owner, Bittenby Studios.