
Valve has put Ultimate General: Gettysburg on the Steam store main page - bdz
https://www.facebook.com/UltimateGeneralStrategyGames/photos/a.597633186948895.1073741828.558492594196288/907112076001003/?type=1
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ZeroGravitas
So, I'm not american, but I visited that page, and from the comments here I
was expecting to see a confederate flag. Instead I see an old C90 style audio
cassette?

Also, my grasp of American history isn't great, but the south lost this war
right? And this particular battle at Gettysburg. And the Gettysburg address is
fairly famous.

So, if not for the context of this being posted and then other comments here,
I would assume this was a total non-event. Am I missing something? What's the
supposed link between this and recent happenings with Apple store regulations
and racist symbolism in the US?

edit: answering my own question, this particular cross-platform game got
removed from the Apple app store as they were unwilling to edit it to remove
the confederate flag from the game believing they shouldn't fall under the
content ban as it was only used in historical context. It's not clear to me if
it's presence is anything but a coincidence as it seems to be a well regarded
game anyway.

~~~
surge
All the corporations are pretending to be hyper sensitive to the church
shooting tragedy, there has been a rush of some kind to blame the flag,
although its a minor if any kind of factor in the issues of race in this
country, especially in the south, Ferguson doesn't fly the flag anywhere and
they have serious race issues. It's basically a marketing strategy under the
guise of being supportive, its an old issue that many have seemed to hijacked
the recent tragedy to push an old issue to the fore.

There has been a giant band wagon of support behind taking down the
confederate flag at the SC state capital in front of a memorial, as its still
seen by some like the nazi flag, or representation of a traitorous flag, for
most, it represents slavery, so there is plenty of argument why its not
appropriate in front of a government building. Personally, I think there are
far worse crimes the U.S. flag represents (killing and past and current
treatment of Native Americans, internment of Japanese, pointless wars that
left millions of innocents dead in Iraq, Laos, Vietnam, the years of slavery
under the U.S. government and the Presidents who owned slaves, etc) so there
is a lot of hypocrisy in pointing out the issue with that flag and the history
behind it. I lived in the south long enough to realize the issues with race
are prevalent everywhere and has little to do with the flag, and hiding the
history of it won't fix a crazy kid shooting up a historic church that had to
fight for the right to worship during its inception in this country. I do
think that its inappropriate to fly it in front of a government building, but
wrong to use someone's tragedy as ammunition to push a long standing personal
agenda that doesn't really fix why it happened.

~~~
coldpie
I largely agree with your comments, but

> wrong to use someone's tragedy as ammunition to push a long standing
> personal agenda

 _Ugh._ No one is using this as "ammunition." The shooting was a symptom of a
problem. Acceptability of racism and pride in racist heritage are possible
contributing factors to this problem. When the symptoms present themselves, it
makes sense to use that opportunity as a reminder that the problems still
exist and that we should take steps to fix them.

~~~
surge
Although, we don't yet know what the problem is or if that's a symptom. If it
is a symptom, then the flag is just another symptom.

I speak of course, that the knee jerk reaction wasn't even a day after the
shooting based on people's misguided views and stereotypes of the south.
Recent evidence points to the shooter having black friends, and talked of
shooting up other places for non-racist reasons, so the whole race motivated
thing could just be a ruse to gain notoriety. But sure, the flag thing is the
most important thing the controversy loving media wants to cover since it
distracts from the T.P.P. being passed, and waiting for all the facts to come
in doesn't make for good ratings. Also, no reason to focus on the victims
recovery from this tragedy, or the long history of the AME Zion church, or the
struggles they've gone through in the past, focusing on the shooter is better.

It's totally ammunition, because its a side show, it has little tangential
relationship to the actual event. It's grasping at straws to find a root cause
we can fix.

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Dylan16807
Wha?

Oh, there's context not on this page, it looks like Apple decided confederate
flags are verboten _in depictions of the civil war_.

Sigh.

~~~
fennecfoxen
> Oh, there's context not on this page, it looks like Apple decided
> confederate flags are verboten in depictions of the civil war.

I wonder if they'd do any better replacing them with swastikas.

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xmoki
"We view apps different than books or songs, which we do not curate. If you
want to criticize a religion, write a book. If you want to describe sex, write
a book or a song, or create a medical app. It can get complicated, but we have
decided to not allow certain kinds of content in the App Store."

I can create a racist song or book and sell it, i cannot create an historical
game.... WTF

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caseysoftware
By refusing to show it - even in proper historical context - we're giving the
Confederate flag more power.

This is just the latest "he who shall not be named."

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hahainternet
Are the front page games chosen explicitly? I would have guessed they were
automated but I have no evidence to suggest that.

~~~
Lennu
I'm pretty sure Valve, like other online shops, have a content management team
which optimizes the shop in all kinds of ways. Automation is probably heavily
included but not completely running the shop.

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doe88
As much as Apple's decision is highly contestable, I don't know if it is worth
trying to make a _PR coup_ by implicitly backing a racist flag. I know I
personally wouldn't want to be remembered as being that guy. Anyway, well done
Valve, _I guess_ , stick it it to big bad Apple.

Edit: to illustrate my point a bit more I think there is a difference between
simply proposing a game with historical flags in your store, which I think
should always be allowed, and putting a controversial subject in front of your
store for PR purpose. For me it's like saying: _see, see in our store we have
games with controvertial flags_ \- come buy our games. I'm not confortable
with that. Maybe I'm wrong though.

~~~
cjslep
Edit: I misunderstood parent comment when crafting the below response.

> a racist flag

I'm curious, should all WW2 games be removed because of the facist swastika
flag? Or games involving the cold war because of the communist flag with the
Soviet Union? In both cases, atrocities that were an affront to humanity
occurred with millions perishing in various camps.

Which brings up another question: Why stop at video games? Board games
physically print these symbols that could be taken offensively. I ask because
I have Axis & Allies and Twilight Struggle sitting on a shelf right here, but
don't consider myself facist, nor communist, nor insensitive. I don't have a
civil war board game but I bet they physically print those symbols too.

~~~
doe88
> should all WW2 games be removed

I don't want to remove nothing, apparently you've misunderstood my comment. It
wasn't the point I was trying to make at all.

~~~
cjslep
Sorry for misunderstanding. As someone who grew up in the South, I have grown
to hear the phrase "a _racist_ flag" as one of those trigger phrases that is
politically loaded. I now realize your point is about being in questionable
taste when using it as a PR stunt.

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viola11
Seems like they have like the maker put up a new cover image, pretty sure that
stupid cassette tape wasn't the official cover image a week ago.

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ionised
For anyone interested, Ultimate General: Gettysburg is a game made by the
well-known modder of the Total War series of games, DarthVader.

His DarthMod series have been consistently rated as among the best, if not the
best overhaul mods available for the series and rightly so.

They are really fantastic.

------
zamalek
Context: [http://rt.com/usa/269779-apple-civil-war-
games/](http://rt.com/usa/269779-apple-civil-war-games/)

Apple and other "major retailers" are pulling anything that includes the
Confederate flag as content from their stores because, as we well know, the
best way to respond to intolerance is to bury our heads in the sand.

~~~
AlexandrB
As someone who thinks the Confederate flag is a powerful racist symbol, this
doesn't make a lick of sense. No one is pulling WWII games even though plenty
feature the Nazi flag.

Mentioning a thing is not equivalent to endorsing it, this is like burning
history books because they also depict the Confederate flag.

~~~
rmc
Mentioning a thing and celebrating/embracing a thing are 2 different things.

Very few people/groups use Nazi flags for themselves anymore.

~~~
kuschku
You can also use a symbol in modified form against the group using it.

For example by crossing it out, for example, or by using it in a caricature
where one compares it with trash.

This symbol [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Anti-
Naz...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Anti-Nazi-
Symbol.svg) obviously contains a swastika, but is obviously legal even under
current German law, as it does not encourage Nazism

~~~
nyir
If only it was so obvious. There was a case in 2006 I remembered were it
apparently wasn't quite so for some people, [http://www.dw.com/en/german-
company-fined-for-selling-anti-n...](http://www.dw.com/en/german-company-
fined-for-selling-anti-nazi-symbols/a-2189625), don't know if something
similar came up again more recently.

~~~
kuschku
The case you linked has been reversed by a higher court, though. And a German
federal politician who was involved in that suggested a change in the law, but
the government was against it.

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protomyth
My problem is Apple didn't pull books with a Confederate Flag on their cover.
They pulled apps. I am getting a little sick of the stand that developers are
not considered for the same creative protections that book authors are. Its
bad enough that companies are designing machines that restrict the people who
make those machines worth buying, but this constant harassment that no large
company would think to apply to movies, tv shows, or books is discouraging.

------
xmoki
"We view apps different than books or songs, which we do not curate. If you
want to criticize a religion, write a book. If you want to describe sex, write
a book or a song, or create a medical app. It can get complicated, but we have
decided to not allow certain kinds of content in the App Store."

I can create a racist song or book and sell it, i cannot create an historical
game.... wtf logic

------
k__
The point here is, if you voice your opinion, your enemies will use this to
voice how their opinion is different. You won't convince people with different
opinions than your own to change, but just send them to your enemies.

------
theandrewbailey
Steam page:
[http://store.steampowered.com/app/306660/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/306660/)

It looks like it's been available for about 8 months.

------
chinathrow
And then you realize that if we wouldn't have games about wars (be it civil
war games or WWII games or whatnot), we wouldn't have this issue.

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cmdrfred
First they came for the people who waved confederate flags, and I did not
speak out— Because I did not wave a confederate flag.

------
Crito
I wonder what the reenactment community thinks of all of this.

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paulhauggis
I'm wondering when this nonsense will stop.

This game is a history lesson for kids. You can't rewrite history, even if you
don't agree with what happened. This is the equivalent of digital book
burning.

Apple isn't removing all of the World War 2 games that contain Nazi symbols.
I'm sure there are games that offend Native Americans and other minorities,
but those aren't removed. Why?

In a related note, this just happened: [http://news.yahoo.com/vandals-target-
confederate-monuments-h...](http://news.yahoo.com/vandals-target-confederate-
monuments-half-dozen-states-053121976.html)

"The graffiti reflects the racial tension that permeates post-Ferguson
America"

...And it's excused. The reason I can't stand behind any of these latest
protests is because it excuses criminal, savage, and animalistic behavior and
this graffiti incident is just another example of it.

I suspect in 10 years, our racial problems will not be any better. Mostly
because the media and politicians continue to create a divide for their gain
and people that question the reality, like me, are silenced long enough that
they just stop participating.

~~~
DanBC
Did you just call black people "savage" and "animals"?

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jcfrei
this straw man argument against confederate flags doesn't deserve any further
discussions.

