Helldivers 2 Community Manager Katherine Baskin declares the game is “pretty woke” and reveals the game was banning individuals she and the developer Arrowhead Game Studios deemed bigots, transphobes, homophobes, and racists.
A screenshot from Helldivers II (2024), Arrowhead Game Studios
As brought to public attention by Mark Kern aka Grummz on X, last month, Baskin replied to a Steam curator list that recommended Helldivers 2 and claimed the game was not woke. She initially just wrote, “lmao.”
However, in a response later in the thread she wrote, “plus helldivers is pretty woke dog. game was made by a lot of lgbtq and brown people and black people and women and it’s a big satire of jingoism.”
She added, “it amuses me they don’t know that super earth is bad! it also explains a lot about the world at present.”
Katherine Baskin on X
In the same thread, Baskin revealed she and developer Arrowhead Game Studios were banning individuals from the game’s discord that they deemed as bigots.
She wrote, “we only ban the bigots – transphobes, homophobes, racists, etc. are not welcome in our community.”
“We had to restrict the topics in the HD2 general chats for a while because it was triggering massive waves of hatespeech which our staff was struggling with emotionally,” she added.
Katherine Baskin on X
Baskin has locked down her profile on X, but Kern shared a number of other posts she had made in the last four years. In June 2020 she she posted, “I’m not talking much because it’s not my turn to talk. It’s time for black people to be heard and for white people to listen. I want to continue to do everything I can to help, including passing the mic.”
In another post she wrote, “I also don’t like the terms ‘casual’ and ‘hardcore’ because they come with the implication that skill = passion.”
“Those words are something gamers cling to, but they are being rendered meaningless as games become more accessible, inclusive, and experimental,” she added.
If I don’t report fairly, or omit facts, I would just be Kotaku. This REALLY sucks.
So we (everyone on my feed) are now looking into Helldivers Community Manager and I’m getting sent stuff.
I will present without comment. pic.twitter.com/upOOfOvou5
— Grummz (@Grummz) April 5, 2024
According to her LinkedIn, Baskin has been a Social Media and Community Manager at Arrowhead Game Studios since December 2021. She is also a Narrative Designer at Shotspark Studios and has been since September 2020. She is also a Community Manager for Voidpoint LLC and has been since May 2020.
She previously worked in academia being an adjunct faculty at Mineral Area College from August 2015 to August 2019. Before that her profile states she was an English Teacher at Perry County School District 32 in Perryville, Missouri. She was a teacher between August 2009 and March 2018.
A screenshot of Katherine Baskin’s LinkedIn profile
What do you make of Baskin describing the game as woke? What do you make of the fact that she claimed the company was banning people they deemed bigots from its discord?
Is she brain damaged? “it amuses me they don’t know that super earth is bad!”
Does she not know what satire is??? I guarantee you the people she’s insulting are more aware of the outlandish concept than she is. That’s the fun of it.
And what a stupid measure for wokeness of the game. Brown/black people aren’t inherently woke, not even necessarily liberal. If they were to put in rainbow flags as capes and NPCs crying about how they’re so gay they can’t function THEN it’d be considered pretty woke.
It seems like Arrowhead Studios are some of the more cunning ones – they hide their agenda to actually profit. Let’s see what their response is to their community manager announcing her and the studio’s wokeness, but in the meantime I’m glad I never bought Helldivers. No game published by Sony will ever get my money.
super earth is bad ? every human coming together on earth to fight an alien species from causing their extinction… what mental gymnastics you must do to reach a point where you think can call it “WOKE”.