Medieval Sim 1348 Ex Voto Hit With Absurd Anti-Woke Conspiracy

"Searching for a smoking gun, it was recently "discovered" that 1348 Ex Voto received roughly €656,131 in government tax credits and grants from 2021 to 2024, via the Italian Ministry of Culture's Video Games Tax Relief scheme. "Turns out Ex Voto 1348 was funded through the Italian grants system, so Italian taxpayers funded propaganda," news aggregation account Pirat_Nation stated."

"Their argument seems to be that gay people apparently didn't exist prior to the release of George Michael's 1998 hit, making this another example of "forced DEI" in games. What makes the conspiracy especially absurd is that 1348 Ex Voto is actually pretty light on the LGBTQ+ representation."

"According to PCGamesN's Nat Smith, you "never see so much as a tender brush of hands" throughout the course of the story. There's also no evidence that the tax relief money the studio received had anything to do with the content of the game."

1348 Ex Voto, a third-person action-adventure game released March 12, received a Metacritic score of 54 but an unusually low user score of 1.1. The disparity stems from anti-woke backlash over the game's inclusion of lesbian romance. Online critics discovered the game received approximately €656,131 in Italian government tax credits and grants from 2021 to 2024, claiming this constituted taxpayer-funded propaganda. However, the game contains minimal LGBTQ+ representation, with no explicit romantic scenes visible. The conspiracy theory lacks evidence connecting the tax relief funding to the game's content, as government support programs have specific requirements unrelated to narrative choices.

Read at Kotaku