After Bethesda removed it from Doom's mod-browser for'real-world politics', Thatcher’s Techbase creators engages in masterful malicious compliant with a censored release

Bethesda seems to be keen to give the impression that its games are all about modders expressing themselves. You can't make a mod which sends the late Margaret Thatcher into "The Tenth Circle of Hell": The United Kingdom of Great Britain & Northern Ireland. If that's the case, then it's on to the dungeon. .

After receiving an "educational notice", the creators of Thatcher's Techbase, a Doom mod, had their.wav removed from the record of Doom+Doom 2, a package that introduces cross platform, in-game, mod support.

But there is good news! Thatcher's Techbase will be re-released on the official store. I will, however, have to call it [REDACTED] Techbase because I'm afraid the characters used in this tweet might break something on our website.

"To celebrate its third birthday, I'm rereleasing THATCHER’S TECHBASE FOR 'DOOM+DOOM2'!" In light of the recent Educational Notice from Bethesda all real-world political issues have been removed."

The result is an utter masterclass in malicious compliance--something that manages to be an even more biting political satire than the original, which mostly just put the face of the famously anti-union political leader in Hell, and let you blow up demons with rockets while pondering the economic impacts of her decade in power.

In a move that is reminiscent of the Streisand effect, [REDACTED] Techbase now serves as a giant middle-finger to Bethesda’s staunchly political stance. Clumsily pixelated enemies, censors signs in comic sans, haphazard stickers of smiley faces, and--perhaps my favorite addition--the replacement of a poster reading "Victory to the Miners", with "Victory for the Gamers". It's about the time!

The soundtrack has even been touched up, as the mod's creator reveals: "Even the soundtrack has been updated to ensure no politically-motivated rhythms can be heard by players. Please listen to "L2VY", a new track from @nostoppingepoch." It's an awesome remix of the public domain classic Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.

I'm more impressed by the sheer hatred displayed here than anything else. I'm not surprised that Bethesda has anti-politics in its official modding platform. It's a little strange, considering that it's the company that owns "American Naivete", a series that is known for its satirization of. But I suppose that once you start digging deeper into messages that are more complex than "nuclear weapons are probably bad to shoot at people", hands start to wring.

Starfield is a good example of Bethesda not wanting to say much about the real-world in its games. Bethesda is now a big company and it's their responsibility to keep things calm. When you're trying so hard to clean Doom ,, a game which was so controversial at the time that Germany banned it, isn't it important that everything that could upset people be removed? The satire is written itself.