Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Is anyone else finding the mods on this forum are removing posts that critise the game?

To the MODS that are doing this and the Larian DEVS that are enabling it......

....Go have a look at what is happening at the moment to The Creative Assembly (Total War Warhammer DEVS) eg the biggest game developer in Europe with over 800 employees (about to be reduced to less then 50)

For Years CA deleted all threads on their forums that criticized the game. Turns out all the criticism was right and now CA is going broke and is about to be bought out by Microsoft for next to nothing.

Silencing free speech is the worst thing you could possibly do. Your customers deserve a voice and should not be banned just to suit your narrative.

Not that I've seen. I see lots of criticism going around about the third act of the game and parts that seem rushed and unfinished etc.

Maybe it is the grammar police.

"(about to be reduced to less then 50)" it is "less than" not "less then".

I've seen plenty of threads criticising the game though, sometimes they get locked because the topic of the thread is already being actively discussed somewhere else, but the thread remains. If you have proof of threads being deleted, then post it.

Not at all. I've criticized this game a ton and not once had my posts removed. Can you give even a single example of this happening?

No. Also - ew, cringe.

PS: You've been a member of this forum for literally four hours. What are you doing, exactly?

We do not remove posts that criticise the game here. In fact we remove very few posts full stop. We delete obvious spam (looking at you Dubai call girls!) and occasionally posts that are judged offensive enough that it is not fair to other forum members to leave them lying around. The latter type of posts should obviously never have been published in the first place, and if we do delete posts for this reason then except in clear and extreme cases of trolling we will usually post a notification in the thread saying we’ve removed something for violation of forum rules. Finally, if there is a thread in which there have been violations of forum rules, then we every now and again warn users that any further failure to adhere to standards expected here will result in offending posts being removed.

Oh, and we do sometimes move threads to a more appropriate subforum, so if you can’t find a thread you’ve created, you can check for posts you’ve created by clicking on your user name against any of your messages or posts and selecting “Forum Posts” from the menu.

I'm onto you and your wily ways Red Queen! You can not hide the truth!

Nah, I'm just messing around. Mods have been rather great. Might not agree with everything but they haven't been silencing people. It's more likely that a user deleted their own post than moderator intervening.

I haven't been on these forums in a good while, but I've found plenty of criticism threads just from quick scans over stuff in the morning while looking for non-spoiler-y stuff to read (just got the game, finally).

If you want to see actual censorship of criticisms towards a game, look no further than FFXIV's main subreddit. It's hard for me to take calls of censorship here seriously, when I've seen how overmoderated that place is.

I've been a strong critic of the game going on four years and have not noticed any of my posts being removed/censored. So I will vigorously defend the moderators here, especially RQ.

The mods do not lot delete criticism here. Until about a year ago I was a regular on the CA forums fir approximately ten years, and they weren’t deleting criticism either.

I have made MULTIPLE posts talking about things I think BG3 has done wrong and have never seen them removed. Personally I think they SHOULD remove some posts. Posts with constructive criticism that prove real feed back and not just attacking are valuable. Troll posts that give no real feedback, just troll for troll should be deleted.

The only time anything gets removed is if it satisfied all (not just some. ALL.) of the following criteria:
1. It was reported.
2. It was mostly off-topic (not about the game).
3. It violated one or more forum rules, particularly the rules on flaming, trolling, and illegal/hateful/harmful content.
4. It was, based on the report, actively causing distress to members of the community.

If it does not follow all of the above criteria and instead only follows some of the criteria, the thread may be locked, or a moderator may leave a warning, but the post will likely not be removed. Even when they do satisfy all of the above criteria, we don't really "remove" them. We move them to a special moderation subforum for review, which is a completely reversible process (which can be reversed if the content is decided not to be harmful).

I am going to assume good faith, waterboy88, and tell you what probably happened was one of the following if you had something removed:
1. A moderator moved your post to the relevant subforum (General vs. Suggestions vs. Story vs. Tips) because it was in the wrong place.
2. A moderator accidentally deleted a post you made while mass deleting the dubai call girl bot spam we get. However, I doubt this is the case because I checked your post history, and you have not had any posts deleted by a moderator.

I think the moderation here is good overall. I have had some issues in the past where I thought some decisions were off; specifically, Administrator Vometia made at least one permanent ban of someone who claimed the romance system was "masturbatory." That permanent ban was out of line, in my opinion.

I also tend to think that moderation is too heavy handed in regards to feedback about the extent of lgbtq content inclusion in the game. It's nearly impossible to have a conversation about these subjects and offer impressions without the thread getting shut down. The same is true when there's an attempt at discussing the way modern politics has a way of infiltrating the story.

There are good discussions to be had revolving around these topics, but they inevitably get shut down. I believe it happens due to bias.

But that's just my opinion, and I've been known to be wrong. I also recognize that moderation is difficult and often unrewarding. It's certainly hard to make continual judgement calls about who's a troll--as opposed to simply having a different opinion--and who's being overly sensitive.

All of that said, I haven't seen any critical posts being deleted, and I acknowledge that quite a bit of leeway is often given.

I would like to explain why moderation cracks down on those posts even when it (rarely) starts out as a fair discussion. After a few weeks of being a moderator, my impression of those threads is that they:

1. Almost always end up in a very bad and/or dark place.
2. Are magnets for bad actors who are not mainstays of this community.
3. Veer into off-topic territory when the discussion is about the problem of certain modern politics in general, rather than how one experiences a video game.

If these discussions were solely made up of long-term posters who are known to be good faith actors with level heads and respect for all, I think we would be less inclined to shut them down. The problem is that it attracts people who are not that way, and the subject matter, combined with the hostility of bad actors, tends to alienate a significant part of the community which feels either dehumanized or "problematized" by the subject and its rhetoric. As a result, there is a slight imperative to be better safe than sorry and engage in the occasional preemptive strike.

I understand. I recognize it's a very difficult balance. Sometimes I just can't help but bark at the moon.

And I would never in a million years want to be a moderator and have to deal with those decisions.

Yeah, I have never seen a criticism of the LGBTQ aspects of the game and it's inclusiveness that wasn't just some bigot who had the same bad take that the entire world should conform to their idea of fascist censorship. Not once have I seen an intelligent argument that could explain how that inclusiveness *materially* affected them in a negative way.

They are just bigots, best thing you can do is just not give them a platform.

[quote=JandK]I also tend to think that moderation is too heavy handed in regards to feedback about the extent of lgbtq content inclusion in the game./quote]

A simple reason behind this is that these conversations are not about the actual game but about espousing a particular position on this political/social issue. This is an RPG, the who or what you choose to have a sexual encounter with in game is not relevant because this is a "role playing game" and you can choose as you wish.

I’m going to suggest that discussing moderator and forum policy with respect to social and political issues isn’t on topic here and there’s a risk it’ll take this thread in the very direction we’re all acknowledging can be a problem.

I’m half tempted to just lock this thread given I think we’ve established there’s no underhand removal of criticism going on (thanks all for your votes of confidence!) But given it feels slightly off to shut down the thread when we have nothing to hide, I’ll leave it for now. I am, though, going to suggest that we possibly have now said what needed to be said here.

Don't suppose you managed to get any photos? Asking for a friend.