Paradox’s removal of Stellaris’ “Whites Only” mod draws controversy [Updated]

Updated 3:49pm EST (8:49pm BST): The “European Phenotypes” mod has been reposted by Progeny of Europe, along with a somewhat mocking description calling it “an experiment to test how far Paradox will lie about banning my other mod” after “a wild ride of lies and slander.”

Progeny says the current description shouldn’t run afoul of Paradox rules that he says he was forced to glean from “conflicting reports to gaming media about why [Paradox] removed my mod.” To keep the mod in Paradox’s good graces, “any comments that will trigger Paradox and send them into an irrational fit of lies will be removed… If you are going to leave a comment, talk as though you are talking to the Stasi.”

Original Story

Stellaris publisher Paradox has removed a Steam Workshop mod that made all in-game humans white Europeans, altering the game’s standard diverse population of planetary citizenry. The claimed reasoning behind that decision, and the reaction to it, are raising a lot of discussion over what is and isn’t “appropriate” content for a game’s modding community.

The “European Phenotype and Names Only (White Humans)” mod delivered just what it claimed, changing the portraits and names for the game’s non-white human characters to read as “European white.” After removing the mod from Steam Workshop, a Paradox spokesperson told Eurogamer that while the company “embrace[s] the idea that players mod the game to best represent how they want to play, we do not however wish to enable discriminatory practices.”

The spokesperson also encouraged users to continue flagging “inappropriate mods” on the game’s Steam Workshop page (which is controlled by Paradox and appears alongside the game’s Steam sales page).

Over on Reddit, though, Paradox Community Manager Paradoxal_Bear said that the issue wasn’t the in-game effect of the mod itself but “several disturbing elements in its public description which we do not want to have clearly displayed on our product page.” He didn’t go into detail on what elements were “disturbing,” but screengrabs of that description from before it was removed suggest that the message “no ‘multiculturalism’ here!” could have been the most problematic phrase.

“We saw the mod, thought it wasn’t in very good taste, but let it remain,” Paradoxal_Bear clarified. “Then the creator of the mod decided to update the description of the mod to promote an ‘agenda’ not related to computer games at all, and this was being clearly displayed on our product page. We decided it was a step too far and removed it.”

Paradox COO Susana Meza Graham echoed the clarification in issuing what she said was Paradox’s final comment on the matter through Twitter. “We have a few rules of conduct that have been in effect for the better part of a decade where racial slurs, among other things, are not allowed. We interpreted this particular mod as breaking those rules of conduct, however it would appear that the comments surrounding the mod, rather than the mod itself, were the biggest problem.”