GoG Makes a Kind of Offensive Tweet, Gives Up

My day job is a freelance copywriter, and I can assure you, trying to write tweets and social media posts for companies is not an easy task. You have to promote your brand while also coming off as authentic and attention-grabbing, all while avoiding any kind of negative press or controversy that might follow the wrong choice of words. It’s a fine line to walk, but there’s a very easy rule of thumb for Twitter - don’t misappropriate hashtags.

A rule that GoG games broke earlier when they used a hashtag designed to support transgender rights to make a pun.

The tweet in question was "Classic PC games #WontBeErased on our watch. Yeah, how's that for some use of hashtags?", which used the #WontBeEraised hashtag that was trending to protest President Donald Trump's plan to try to strictly define gender by birth genitals. Which, in my and many other people’s opinion, is a really important issue that probably shouldn’t be taken so lightly. It only took a few hours for GoG to realize how badly they messed up, and after deleting the tweet they posted an apology the next day.

Yesterday, we posted a tweet containing a trending hashtag as a pun. The tweet was neither intended as a malicious attack, nor as a comment to the ongoing social debate.GOG should focus only on games. We acknowledge that and we commit to it.

The problem is that this is far from the first time GoG’s twitter account has had this problem. Earlier this year they pulled a “did you just assume our gender”, which fans found less-than-charming, and earlier still they made some very strange gamergate jokes that were probably a big hit for the wrong audience.

I guess some companies just shouldn’t tweet. And it seems that finally, GoG has figured that out.