[j_4]

As far as I know, it's a whole different scale of issue. WotC did some fashionable corporate virtue signaling. Some of it sounded reasonable enough to me, some of it was a bit eyerolly but nothing I'm aware of seemed too egregious.

To give one example - Netrunner has (had, I guess) a mechanic called Brain Damage, tied to effects which in lore terms did just that to the runner (hacker) character: heavily damaged by nasty corp tech while jacked into the cyberspace, and having to operate with less capacity/limited resources from that point on. Pretty standard cyberpunk stuff.

Null Signal decided one day that the term is grossly insensitive and now purged from the game, and while they might've told you to print cards containing it up until yesterday, reading it off your cards is now considered literal violence and will get you booted off tournaments. If you're not immediately 100% on board with this decision, you are a morally deficient person and not welcome in the community.

[angus-prune]

Null Signal's blog post[0] about the topic seems to entirely contradict your narrative about how this change is being approached. Have there been further developments since this was first announced?

"You will not be banned for referring to brain damage. We prefer that you switch to core damage, and will remind you, but it’s not an enumerated infraction.

However, if a fellow player is harmed by any aspect of your behavior (including using the old term instead of the new term) and politely requests that you stop, you are expected to do so. We have always asked players to be polite and make easy accommodations when asked, as is clarified by our Code of Conduct. This is not a change in policy."

[0] https://nullsignal.games/blog/core-damage/

[j_4]

You'll notice that was added in an addendum, they must've backtracked. I haven't seen it before. What I saw was the original announcement and the resulting Reddit discussion, in which the article author and several other members of the organization had a very different, self-righteous, and downright combative tone. The threat of banning people for not complying was explicitly spelled out.

That Reddit thread is here. It seems to have been thoroughly cleaned up, but you can still see some slivers. I don't think it's worth wading through it, especially if Null Signal learned to be more diplomatic from it - just wanted to make it clear that I was being truthful, or at least as best as I could. I remember the "violence" and "morally deficient" bits as direct quotes, but my memory might be faulty and hyperbolized.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Netrunner/comments/vvr25h/nisei_an_...

(NISEI is the former name of Null Signal Games, that's also a term they deemed insensitive, and chose to fully rebrand.)