To commemorate the three-year-anniversary of third-person shooter RPG Goddess of Victory: NIKKE, Shift Up recently released a special developers’ interview video discussing the game’s future and addressing players’ questions and concerns.
As reported by ThisIsGame, Shift Up’s NIKKE team also dedicated part of this stream to taking a firm stance against “hateful expressions” in the game. Director Hyungsuk Yoo commented, “We will never tolerate anyone intentionally inserting hate speech into NIKKE or approaching the game with that mindset.” He mentions that the studio has recently taken steps to fortify its internal quality review process and project management system to prevent “recurrence of issues.”
While the developers weren’t specific about what this refers to, the statement was likely meant to address a controversial incident from earlier this year. In August, Shift Up released a commemorative illustration celebrating the game’s 1,000th day since launch. However, the artwork quickly blew up among a portion of Korean players, who alleged that the hands of two characters were posed so as to evoke a “finger-pinching gesture” (seen below).
Although it doesn’t mean much overseas, this gesture, known as the jibgeson or “crab hand” is highly controversial in South Korea due to its association with specific radical feminist groups considered to be “antimale” or misandrist. Said groups used the gesture as a way to mock Korean men, suggesting they have small genitals. Years of heated gender wars between radical feminists and radical anti-feminists in the country have heightened sensitivity towards the gesture to the point that even big businesses like Apple and Renault have been pressured into revising ads which unwittingly evoked the crab hand. It’s been a problem in the game industry too, with Nexon’s artists receiving death threats over a single animation frame suspected of being “secret feminist propaganda.”
Following the backlash, NIKKE’s development team issued an official apology. They explained that the artwork was outsourced from an overseas studio and that there was no agenda or hateful intent behind it. They apologized for the misunderstanding and issued a revised version of the illustration, with the characters’ hands posed differently (seen below). Shift Up also distributed free in-game items to atone for the oversight, but judging by the number of angry comments on both the August apology and the latest developer interview, it doesn’t seem like the fire is out yet.
In the meantime, the dev team has established a new Quality Management department to prevent any issues related to in-game assets down the line. Given that some users are anxious about the crab hand being snuck into popular media as a form of propaganda, Shift Up’s comment about “not tolerating anyone inserting hate speech” into NIKKE is likely meant as a way to relieve such concerns.
