Removing Bubba masks: Never a win.
BHVR had an opportunity to prevent racism through reinforcement of rules and re-inspection of the reporting center, but failed. It is not an effective way at all for them to get rid of Bubba's masks. This is because the mask was just a method for harassment, and racists would find other ways and bother other users unless they were sanctioned by regulations.
Far from winning, this is rather a defeat. Those who caused racism will be punished lightly (as BHVR has always been), and only innocent users who loved Bubba's masks will be punished for no reason.
BHVR then asks us if they should leave masks used as weapons of racism. And the answer to that is 'Yes'. They should do what they have to do, not delete content that is used differently than intended: Dealing with users who violate the rules of the game properly.
Comments
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Removing a method to be racist is still a good thing though
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What if racists use certain characters like Claudette for racist harassment? Should we remove Characters as well?
There are tons of ways to do racism. Just because content is abused, deleting it one by one does not help prevent racism.
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Glad we have even more of these threads because this hasn't been discussed in depth on here before.
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Yeah, and there are still a lot of people celebrating an empty victory.
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However this rises the question if you should throw something away just because people with malicious intent are using it. We let those racists claim the face masks now they are their symbol, a symbol of harassment.
Imagine something like this happening to other items or cosmetics. Should we just let them have it or should we fight to keep these things?
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And there are still a lot of people crying "censorship" over losing four terrible recolours, your point?
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Why don't you know that something insignificant to yourself may be meaningful to others? Such an attitude does not help discussion.
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Removing a black character is different than removing a mask of a black character worn by a white person. Obviously it doesn’t completely stop racism but it’s better than nothing
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I agree, that removing a method to be racist is a good thing, but from all the "evidence" that I've seen linked here so far, including an almost 40 minute video, I might have missed something but, a Bubba chasing/tunneling/camping/hitting on hook/nodding isn't in itself evidence that that player was being racist, and in none of those contexts was presented the end game of those games with a player directly saying "I did x because you are PoC".
I'm all for removing things if we have evidence that they're being used for harassment, not because they are assumed being used for harassment.
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Honestly I thought the face masks were a pretty dumb idea to begin with and I'm surprised it took this long for them to be removed.
What does concern me though is the amount of people celebrating their removal because it removes a tool for racists. If these idiots (the racists) got organised enough they could turn any character or cosmetic into a symbol of racism/harassment if the community lets them.
Post edited by MyelinXCVIII on7 -
The issue I have with the removing of the masks, is not about the removing of them specifically, because I don't play Bubba and never tried to unlock masks because in all honestly, they were just horribly textured.
My problem with the situation in specific, is that I feel like BHVR is doing this, but then we will have to wait months and months until they actually do something about their piss poor reporting system and chat filtering. Slurs are still able to bypass the filter, and there was even a report here yesterday with evidence of someone who had reported a racist (directly visible on their steam profile AND end game chat logs) more than 10 times and they are still playing to this day.
I also don't think people who use slurs should just be a temporary ban, like Mandy yesterday said they were. It should be a permanent ban.
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All I know is that if I bother the right people enough times, BHVR will potentially react to my terrible behaviour (hehe) and acknowledge my misdeeds with a blanket punishment to all that enjoy the tools I use for nefarious purposes. I'll likely not get banned, because I got loads of cheap or free copies of the game and I'll continue to be a dreadful troll with the keen purpose of getting more content removed because I can and it annoys people on so many different levels.
Note, I'm not actually doing this, but this is exactly what trolls who do this ######### think. This isn't a step to stop racism, just a lazy fix that's about as advanced as changing values on a problematic addon or perk rather than addressing the idea behind it. Expect trolls to be emboldened by this, not that much was stopping them to begin with.
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Thats not as clear-cut as you think. None-native speaker might use slurs they dont really know are racist, or just try to translate terms from their own language, and either do it badly, or it means something different in english. Banning those people permanently for that would be a bit harsh. Temporary ban is ok, as long as it is long enough to be impactful.
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It's pretty obvious when a word is being used to be offensive when there's context associated. End game chat, someone says the n-word slur or f-word slur, it's pretty obvious what they are trying to accomplish there.
In other languages, they should also have moderators who speak them. I'm pretty sure a millionaire company can afford to hire some translators if needed.
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Keep the masks : you lose
Delete them: you lose
Talk about them: jokes on you youre loosing too
...wait i did just talked about the masks too... dang it !
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When you remove the microphone of hatred you inevitably must starve it even tho you know its still there itll persist. This way the players of hatred wont use this game as a platform for their ideals. We cant turn a blind eye to it and think its not that bad when we see hatred clearly growing in other areas of life. I know this is only a game and unfortunately we have people who have bitter frustrations and have found a way to engage and feed that hatred in them. Its not our place to say its really not that big of a deal or its only cosmetics. If your like me a white male then we are the furthest from that first hand understanding. It really sucks when hatred has to stir up this much trouble but we need to be supportive to those who are being targeted even if its a game because then that hatred will only spread and bring more like minded individuals into this game which we cant allow. Hopefully itll resolve some of it down the road and the mouth piece of hatred will slowly soften or become silent.
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I agree. I wish BHVR owned up to their mistake of adding the cosmetics in the first place instead of using the player base as the reason for their removal (even if the players in question are [BAD WORD]).
Of course if they owned up to it like that, they'd be admitting that they've been enabling black face for the past however long it's been since the TCM paragraph came out...
Post edited by MyelinXCVIII on0 -
This is 100% my feelings on the issue. This also is now a precedent for them to do it again and again. They could now just remove any content they deem problematic be it racist or not. This really just reinforces that digital content is not permanent and can go away at any second.
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Removing Bubbas masks is the very definition of Virtue signalling. And for the record, Bubba didn't just have a mask of a black character.
But to be honest: I'm enjoying the whole "DBD show"
- First: Stranger Things DLC - Content gone: Check
- Now: Bubbas Masks - Content gone: Check
Let's see what surprises the future holds.
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If people's sense of moral superiority could be converted to energy, these threads could replace fossil fuels.
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The truth is, anything can be used in a racist way. So yes bhvr needs to focus on banning these players instead of removing things from the game. And i still haven't seen any convincing video evidence of how the faces were used in a racist way. I saw one video posted where a bubba tunneled a streamer while wearing it. Streamers are open to that kind of harassments. It doesn't mean this is a wide spread issue. Plus it should be easy for a streamer to report that player since they are always recording. Terrible move by bhvr. It just wreaks of virtue signaling devoid of any actual meaning.
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You can't say "They're only cosmetics, stop complaining that they're removed because its not a big deal!" while also celebrating or promoting the removal itself as if the same cosmetics are this big magical deal to you when you most likely weren't even involved in the first place. If it isn't such a big deal, why are you protesting a cosmetic that you MIGHT see once every several hundred games?
Bad people will be bad people regardless, therefore punishing thousands of players who have these cosmetics by removing them doesn't do anything to curb this behavior nor does it change the fact that what happened already happened. It doesn't solve the issue, change the past or do anything other than punish innocent customers. This is just virtue signaling and making a spicy permanent decision for temporary kudos that will be forgotten by the people praising this in 2 weeks
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After giving it some thought, I must say that I ultimately have to agree with BHVR's decision. It was pretty clear the masks couldn't stay as they were, and changing them wouldn't do anything to combat what they were used for. Given that there are/were 2 offending masks as well, this is just the better solution. To that end, I'm also glad that they are removing the other two. It would create a standout that would be just as bad.
Besides, if the creator themselves is happy they are going, then who are we to say they should stay?
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I don't know if the mask can be qualified as such.
Anyone who doesn't know about the controversy surrounding the mask wouldn't be affected by it, would they?
But conversely, and this is part of why I'm uncomfortable with this decision: That controversy could easily repeat. All it takes is some jack-ass singling out a new thing, stating that people are using it to be racist, and suddenly that new thing carries on the same problem of the mask.
In terms of what's doing the actual damage, I'd say the order goes: Cosmetic < < Rumination on the cosmetic < < < < < < < < < < < < < < < < The actual racists.
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So... basically the problem is the black mask, every other mask is fine with it? Talking about double standars. It's a f*cking killer that uses the face of those whose he has killed, for God sake. Do you think Bubba cares about your skin color? Besides, many players use Claudette so this is pretty much the easiest mask to earn and if you've earned a mask, you'd love to show it off. It has nothing to do with racism. On a sidenote: Jack is Asian. Why people hasn't complained about a Bubba using Jake's mask? Huh? Perhaps it's not a racism issue but people wanting it to be.
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Honestly it’s probably because people couldn’t tell the difference. Again if it was being used for racist reasons (which it was in some cases) I don’t see the need to keep it especially since bubba has other cosmetics now.
Of course bubba doesn’t care about skin colour but people using the mask for racist reasons did
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I mean, we don't know that for sure... people target Claudette's with almost every character due to being Claudettes. I mean I've seen the videos of those "racism comments" and there were comments of "You were Claudette", it wasn't something like "you're using a black character", so people felt like they were racist or hating towards black people when actually, they were tunneling a character just because it's easier to lose track to them... and you know how many threads there were about "blackface" when actually they played Jane or anything but saw LF with the Claudette's mask and used the " historical reasons card" when in history, black people have slaved white people as well... but oh no "if you know, in America..." almost everyone will tell you the same, like if racism towards white people didn't nor doesn't exist which is wrong... and actually people will tell you that if something like if LF were black and using a white face would be right because "historically... it happened otherwise" because they don't know anything about worldwide history. American history is just a tiny piece of worldwide history. Besides... it all happended a long time ago. Don't you think it's time to forget that people were so racist and stop feeling so touchy about almost anything? There are racist people nowadays, yes. But most of the people have forgotten about it. As an example, in Spain some white kids had their face painted black on a Christmas show since of course, some hebrews were people of color and yet some people told these kids were making fun of the black people and that if they wanted a black person, there are many black kids... so what? If I am in a school full of white kids should I head over 100 schools because some black person is going to get angry? No way, there's a difference between being racist and complaining just for the sake of complain.
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Setting a standard of removing content whenever it gets used as part of a way to harass other players is going to end up horribly.
Now all it takes is a couple of shitheads to be jerks to others and get a cosmetic taken out of the game for everyone.
At the end of the day the people who were harassing people with smartface will continue to do so, now just without the face.
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There isn't even a 1% of racism in bubba face mask. Its all about how people interpret the use, wich can't be deal with even if the devs apply tougher rules. People will do whatever they want.. Therefore removing the mask does not solve any problem and its totally pointless.
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That's horrible reasoning. It doesn't really matter how people used it. If you watched the video by I believe sistakaren who made a compilation of interviews of black content creators talking about it, many flat out said that they thought it was black face from the beginning, rather than this is a cosmetic that is being used to resemble black face. It's extremely dishonest to say BHVR added black face when that's not the case. Black face is make up/some sort of styling meant to make a mockery out of a black person. This is not how the Bubba mask is used even in the instance of racism. Extremely poor logic on the people who proposed the situation and poor behaviour of them to label it as black face in that way.
And who the hell cares if people are using it for malicious reasons when it's not going to change the behaviour itself? Did you not hear about the many people who got targeted for wearing pride charms? And it still happens. Should that be removed since the pride charm is being used maliciously to target people who are (presumably) LGBT?
The whole advocacy of removing the mask is not only going to not help the situation but probably make it worse. Someone in the video, I believe sistakaren herself, even said this. If so...why do it? Why not put an emphasis on having BHVR harshly punish racists who harass people of colour?
I don't blame BHVR for removing the mask though, they simply did what was requested of them and it was a PR move. I don't care about the mask being removed as I never used it but the reasoning on the behalf of the proposers is dumb. It's not a partial win; it's a loss and they now have egg on their face and they painted the target on their backs with a more vibrant colour because of the idiocy of their advocacy.
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Citation needed on your 1%. What data do you have that others don't? Or is it just based off your own, personal time in the game?
I'm sorry but if something can be used for racism; it needs to be changed or removed. We don't allow hate to spread and then go 'Oh, well, it's only 1% of people! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ '.
I think one thing that has pissed me off about a few replies is this tone of 'Well I never saw it, so it can't be that bad!'. Those are the replies of people unable to comprehend anything outside their own, personal universe. They never saw it, so everyone who suffered must be making a stink over nothing.
And at the other end is people screaming 'All censorship is bad!' and babbling slippery slope fallacies and excuses as to why hate speech is okay because 'It's just words, bruh! It's your fault if you get offended!' (Side note: I want to slap everyone who says it's the target's fault when someone uses hate speech to offend them.)
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This post, right here, tells us everything we need to know about your agenda.
How dare people celebrate what they perceive as a valid attempt to thwart racism.
How. Dare. They.
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You are not understanding the point. Was the purpose from Behaviour to make leatherface masks to promote racism? Not in the slightest. Now if some people use them to harass someone its not Behaviour fault and definitely not the community fault, so removing the mask don't fix anything and its a pointless action that only damage content of the Leatherface DLC. What they should do if they are not already doing it, is just take any kind of harassment in post game chat more seriously.
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Removing masks isn't going to stop those people from doing what they did, or prevent racists from being racist in game. What does is a functional report system, actual customer service, and putting out bans. But at the end of the day.. I don't care about Bubba or his masks anyway.
Same argument people made for those wearing LGBTQ+ flags. Didn't matter if they were or were not going out of their way to "target" them, it was just an excuse they used, the same as tunneling or being a toxic survivor.
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Hammers can be used for assault. Bans hammers. "We removed a method of assault guys, this is a logical train of thought."
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Removing tools racists use to amplify their hate is a good thing and a win. What is bad and a loss is people directing their anger towards BHVR and the victims of the harassment instead of at the racists.
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Imagine if the masks were kept in and the Claudette one was replaced with say Nea.
Then all the usual darlings would start jumping up and down, screaming discrimination.
"Literally shaking".
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The "tools that racists use" in this case is content that non-racist players may enjoy, so no, that's not an objective win. At best, it's a net neutral. An action taken at the expense of some for the sake of innocent parties is not a win. You all talk as if the sole reason these cosmetics exist is for racism. It clearly doesn't, so we're going into the rabbit hole of "something can be abused, remove said thing regardless of its merits." That argument has no merit.
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I dont get his at all.
Maybe i am too naive but i dont see how these masks can be used in a racist manner.
If the masks can be used in a racist manner then everything else in the game could as well.
So where would that lead to?
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Wouldn't it be truly lore accurate though since in the movies only non-racial-minority teens seem to be dumb enough to stray into Bubba's yard? Claudette's just too smart to get turned into part of his wardrobe.
Another regular survivor face would probably be pretty boring, though. The devs could replace Claudette's (and Jake's?) mask with a patchwork mask, no skin color singled out. Maybe give it a pair of glasses, too (the glasses weren't originally my idea, but damn I really wanna see Bubba with glasses, now).
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I just had another interesting point to add: In his disturbed mind Bubba puts on the masks to be like the person he wears. He does this for their personality traits and to be of use for his family. As such he maybe puts on Claudettes face to be like her: Empathic and smart. Both are traits he can not grasp and he severly lacks.
A major problem with this is that the racists have won: They took that mask as a symbol and we let them. Now with their removal this is set in stone and nothing can be done. This is plain wrong: We should not let racists take symbols from us and not let them win.
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As we already said multiple times: no one is discussing the character, the issue is not Leatherface the character, the issue is how people used the mask as a tool to amplify their discriminatory intentions and that's why it's been removed.
I'm closing this here.
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