Doom Eternal devs basically ignored these same idiots when they were reeeeing over the mortally challenged joke and they basically went away. They feed themselves from manufactured outrage, once they reeee over something enough they basically move on. The same with THQ, granted THQ apologized but they didn't accept the apology and went on reeeing how they wanted people fired. THQ didn't bend and they went away. They are like toddlers throwing tantrums for a while and then getting distracted by the next shiny offense they can find. The best strategy is just to ignore these people.
The thing that troubles me most though is that, while the people developing Doom and the folks at THQ probably know their companies are big enough to ride out the storm, smaller developers and publishers cannot do this.
You can even see it in their own threads over at the asylum. THQ might have fucked up but they are responsible for some huge IPs that people simply are not going to boycott over some minor nonsense that they already owned up to.
Doom is just a massive name in gaming so it really doesn't matter. "There's a new Doom coming out? Fuck YEAH!" Even if there was a big controversy normal people are going to say "who cares, I WANT NEW DOOM!"
Smaller devs and publishers pushing new IPs have to work much harder to get their game out there and noticed and bought and played. Word of mouth is always going to be a big part of that.
So if these dickheads are targeting and going after developers over this kind of rubbish then it's a bad spot for the developer. They basically lose either way.
Look at the carry on with Mordhau. The usual suspects bitching and moaning with no real understanding that this is a smaller game with a smaller dev team so for them to properly police the community means more employees working more hours for an unspecified amount of time. So say they have to pay 2 people 31k per year to censor players and ban players and deal with appeals etc etc then they need to sell a few thousand extra copies of the game in an environment where people are whining about how toxic their game is.
Big developers and big name games can definitely just ignore them.
Smaller devs have a real dilemma on their hands if the beady swiveling eye of Retarded Sauron turns on them. After risking so much to get their game made and out there, while knowing that getting good sales and positive buzz is going to be another battle, they are faced with this Forum of Clowns that wants to tear them down because someone got their feelings hurt.
It's not like Doom or THQ when people will just go "shut the fuck up, you shower of lego-eating hermaphrodites, I am buying the game". There is a real danger that negative buzz will put people off. When your game might struggle to find an audience this is a big issue. Especially when talk about your game is shut down or tainted by this "controversy".
On the other hand if the dev does bow down to the hate mob it just makes other people think "nah, I am not going to give you my money after watching you placate and pander to these immature assholes".
They can't win and other developers will be looking on and thinking "ok we need to tread very carefully".
These video game activists are never going to go away and, in my opinion, this will continue to hurt the indie scene.
One of the good things about indie games is that the developers have a bit more freedom to engage with their audience and can use their own personality and life experience to bring people to their game. Personally, I will definitely buy a game and give it a chance if the devs seem like cool people who deserve a chance. Plus I get a new game out of it so it's all good. Stuff like this makes me think that all that could go away and indie devs just become exactly like all the AAA talking heads.
Indie development really should be like the "punk rock" of the videogame sphere but it can't be because of these socially awkward dipshits who want to control every aspect of everything just incase somebody somewhere is offended by the content in the game or the opinions of the developer.
Unless the game is something like "Lucius The Non-Binary Alien From Planet Wheelchair Fights Depression And Cancer At The Same Time With A Rainbow Dildo Up His Ass" then THAT'S revolutionizing the medium.