Should a Guy Who Hates Non-Underdressed Clerics but Thinks Preteen Maid Pseudoporn is "Art" Get to Decide What RPGs All The Rest of Us Buy?

“Should DTRPG be a gatekeeper? Maybe, maybe not. But the hubbub and rage around the game in question kinda indicates a ‘yes’, to me.”

The above is Fred Hicks (of Evil Hat games), explaining how HE, through commercial pressure to DTRPG, should be the Gatekeeper of the RPG hobby. He just out and out admitted it.

You see, Evil Hat just recently put pressure on onebookshelf to get them to ban James Desborough's (admittedly moronic) "Gamergate" card game. In a knee-jerk reaction after Fred Hicks complained to them, instead of bravely standing up for customer choice, or pointing out the inherent conflict of interest Hicks has as a competitor, they instead totally folded and pulled Desborough's product.

Do YOU think that Fred Hicks should be the one to decide what RPGs should belong in the hobby and which don't?
Before you comment, do keep in mind that Fred Hicks is buddy-buddy with the people who publish the Maid RPG, so he has no problem with an RPG where you play a preteen pseudo-slave in a transparent uniform performing humiliating and sometimes sexualized tasks to please her adult male "master", but thinks a Gamergate comedy card game is a moral outrage worthy of censorship.

Is that who we want deciding for all of us what we should or should not be allowed to buy? He literally believes he's more qualified and wise to judge what's best for you than you, to the point that he feels he should get to control what you're even allowed to consider buying.
Note: I'm not even saying Maid should be censored. I'm saying NO ONE ELSE should get to decide for me which games I have access to. I am also saying, of course, that Fred Hicks and his ilk would in any case be the most utterly unqualified people on earth to be moral arbiters of what should or should not be banned.   But of course, that's the irony, anyone who thinks they have so much more wisdom than anyone else that they should get to decide what is best for everybody is by default automatically disqualified from being morally or intellectually worthy of such a power.

And if OBS sticks by the decision to ban Desborough's game, there's no telling which other games will be next. One thing that will be clear is that the choices will be just as hypocritical: obscene misery-tourism storygames that simulate things like necrophilia and pederasty will be kept on because they're written by the 'right people' for these assholes, while D&D OSR sandboxes will get banned because they have drawings of fully-armored female clerics they judge to be looking just a little too sultry.

I'd strongly suggest that if you would rather that YOU get to decide what RPGs you can choose to buy, rather than Fred Hicks, you may want to WRITE to OBS and express your concern about the censorship of Desborough's game.  This is NOT about Desborough, this is definitely NOT about supporting gamergate, this is about making sure a total asshole doesn't get to choose from now on which RPGs will be allowed to be commercially viable and which won't.

Send complaints here? (unless someone comes along in the comments and shows us a more direct route that will get to the people in charge at OBS)

RPGPundit

Currently Smoking: Lorenzetti Solitario Rhodesian +  C&D's Pirate Kake