GOG Deletes Controversial Tweet, Issues Statement

Digital games retailer GOG shared a tweet that caused controversy on Monday before deleting the message and saying the company "should focus only on games."

The retailer owned by parent company CD Projekt shared a games-related tweet that incorporated #WontBeErased, a hashtag used that went viral to show support for transgender individuals. Referring to classic PC games, the latter half of the tweet indicated that the actual purpose of the hashtag was not unknown to GOG. The retailer said "Yeah, how's that for some use of hashtags" at the end of the tweet but quickly deleted the entire thing after posting it. It wasn't deleted before other people could take screenshots of the tweet such as the one below that shows what the original message said.

Damn, they deleted this quick.

Guess even the Gat0r-trash that helms the GOG Social Media accounts realized that this is gonna backfire.

But don't worry, here's a screenshot. pic.twitter.com/SJTfHoiWwd

— [GROBI]🏳️‍🌈🏴 (@Angry_Gr0bi) October 22, 2018

Following the publishing and deleting of the tweet on Monday, GOG issued a statement on Tuesday in another tweet that acknowledged the problematic message. GOG's tweet didn't apologize for the situation and referred to the use of the hashtag as "a pun" before saying that it knows is should focus on games and not "the ongoing social media debate."

"Yesterday, we posted a tweet containing a trending hashtag as a pun," GOG's tweet said. "The tweet was neither intended as a malicious attack, nor as a comment to the ongoing social debate. GOG should focus only on games. We acknowledge that and we commit to it."

Yesterday, we posted a tweet containing a trending hashtag as a pun. The tweet was neither intended as a malicious attack, nor as a comment to the ongoing social debate.

GOG should focus only on games. We acknowledge that and we commit to it.

— GOG.COM (@GOGcom) October 23, 2018

This isn't the first time that GOG's owner, CD Projekt, has found itself in similar controversies on Twitter. Back in August, a tweet shared through the Cyberpunk 2077 Twitter account used a gender-related joke by asking a user "Did you just assume their gender?!" That tweet has since been deleted as well with the message being removed shortly after it was shared during a peak moment of attention for the new cyberpunk game with the account issuing a statement shortly afterwards.

"Sorry to all those offended by one of the response sent out from our account earlier," the tweet from August said. "Harming anyone was never our intention."