Why LGBT is so important?

Actually you'd be surprised- BHVR isn't that huge. They have, like, 500 employees. Not 500 people for DBD, 500 employees- that's the marketing, PR, HR, devs, devs for other games (they make quite a few mobile games), according to their website they offer free hot meals to all staff so I'd guess catering staff too. In comparison to a lot of other companies BHVR is pretty small.

If they purely wanted it for the profit, they would have decided to do it earlier I think. They made a statement after community feedback asking for it that they don’t want to do it. They just changed this statement now because they have contradicted themselves and the community made them aware of it.

I don't understand any of this (and am happy to be educated about it) - why does the sexual orientation matter? It's not like the game revolves around making these kinds of life choices... it's about survival. Running from a killer! Where exactly is it relevant to wonder whether character X likes boys, girls, or boys and girls, etc? How does that effect gameplay?

And particularly on the subject of identification with the characters, how about this? We have multiple white characters, multiple black characters, and multiple oriental characters (if I can use that term), both in male and female varients. Where are the South-Asian-esque characters? People of a polynesian, or indian/middle-eastern background, where is their representation? When I play the game, there is literally no character that even comes close to resembling me in appearance - if it's about representation, surely this should be addressed first, before addressing factors that aren't even a part of the gameplay?

Yeah, I don't buy the territory thing. Diversity is easy enough if you stop duplicating models/regions.

We got multiple white males, white females, black males, oriental females. It'd be really easy to add more diversity if you stop duplicating what you already have. One model can look like nearly enough a massive range if you choose something generic enough.

They didn’t they they would add a char for every possible sexual orientation or gender or what.

they merely stated they might add the themes in the lore and will not restrict themselves anymore in this regard.

its not about representing every possible individual. But they have said they won’t add anything LGBT (or straight) but they never restricted themselves with ethnicities or anything else.

I'm pretty sure they let you choose non-binary or other, though.

not the last time I took one they may have changed it since, but it was male or female at one time. ;)

Eh, they just made a statement and that's it. We haven't really seen how it's gonna be implemented, so I don't know why it became such a big deal here in the forum.

Although to answer the OP, I try not to put too much emphasis on intention. Say, if a company donates to a charity, does it really matter why they're doing it? Better to help unwillingly than to willingly not help.

But again, BHVR really hasn't done anything yet.

I'm not English either, just FYI.

I think you're missing the point I'm trying to make. Let's take Feng and Yui as examples. Do you not think that a person who identifies closely to one could also identify with the other? They're ethnically similar and not that far apart to the extent where other regions are completely non-existent.

You've got Tapp and Adam, again, same question? Is it too much to imagine that anyone who identifies with one couldn't identify with another?

And now consider this at the same time as asking, what possible survivor could someone from a Mid-Eastern background identify with? There's well over 20 characters, and not a single one that comes close here. And yes, I get that some come from licences so are fixed in their nature to a degree, but that doesn't mean that non-licenced characters need to duplicate them.

If we're talking about representation of players, I would argue that making a more ethnically diverse cast would cover a lot more representation and do much more in this regard, rather than forcing in some LGBT backstory which has absolutely zero effect on any aspect of the gameplay itself and appears to only exist as a token gesture.

I know it's the first one, I just was thinking for a second "maybe he said Fu** u idiot because I'm French" lol

As much as this is something to celebrate and support in real life. If treated incorrectly this could kill the game. All I've been hearing of lately is "Who is the most LGBT character?", "Should we get LGBT cosmetics?", "Should we be able to switch genders of certain characters?"

Just think for a moment, say they do make a LGBT character. Next argument will be, 'Not enough representation of it in game'. That will only encourage them to start making the next few survivors LGBT. So no. Dont introduce LGBT characters as YOU are the survivor. I play Nea and I'm straight, so Nea is straight. If you play Nea and you're gay. Then Nea is gay. The character can be what you want them to be as it's you playing them. And just cause they dont have a 'LGBT backstory' doesnt make them any less. Make a few cosmetics in game FOR FREE like a shirt, a hoodie so people (if they want to) can show their support. That is all that should be done with this.

That’s not true. They always were defined characters and not blank husks. They have defined backstories and families and relations. BHVR stated they don’t want to confirm their sexuality but they contradicted themselves and reveals some relationships - only heterosexuals. They have already stated that at least one char is in fact LGBT, but they never said who and didn’t want to reveal it - now they could do that with the tomes.

that said, if you play Nea and she is stated to be lesbian, that shouldn’t affect your gameplay at all. Nothing stops you from having your head canon.

If they made an LGBT character, why not state who? It's a game. I'd like to know when this was said as if it was said when the character was created rather than when this discussion came up would be interesting.

sponges are hermaphrodites (some of them even true hermaphrodites), they have both male and female gonads, there isn't a gender distinction between sponges, sexuality as we know in humans has never been observed in any animal, hence biologically speaking it doesn't make sense for a sponge to be homosexual (yes, even in a show where there's fire underwater it doesn't make sense).

the show never actually hints his orientation, every image you brought doesn't prove anything (the last one is even out of context, probably from the average "represented by spongebob" meme). The average spongebob fan doesn't even know what that means, so it can't be used as an identification (especially since its sexuality has been revealed through other media, not the show itself).

adding the historical period when it was revealed, it's not hard to understand that it was just a marketing and politically correct strategy, which I'm fine with, we are in 2020 after all.

Ask the devs. I actually can’t find the statement now, it was a while ago, I don’t even know exactly in which form (possibly a Q&A?)

even if it was not stated, we have chars with confirmed hetero relationships and we have many more chars without any mentions at all. With the tomes and actually news backstories they expand the lore even more and ever deeper. Not mentioning any non-heterosexual relationship at all would be creatively very restricting and also feel very unnatural.

It's not unnatural at all. The games until now have pretty much had most or every character in a heterosexual relationships and that's not weird.