After rumors last week that Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 was banned in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for “unskippable” Pride-centric romance scenes, the game’s creative director took to X to set the record straight.
Daniel Vávra, the Creative Director of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, has spoken out to address the swirling rumors regarding the game’s content and alleged bans in certain countries. His statement provided some clarity on several contentious claims, confirming the presence of divisive romance options while emphasizing the studio’s commitment to historical accuracy and player choice.
It is time to address wild claims some people spread that are apparently based just on one screenshot and a poorly translated tweet (Spoiler alert: contains spoilers about the story of KCD2): pic.twitter.com/1IV1kgfRgL
— Daniel Vávra ⚔ (@DanielVavra) January 19, 2025
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In a detailed response, Vávra debunked reports that Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 was banned in Saudi Arabia due to “unskippable scenes.”
“There are NO unskippable cutscenes in our games,” he said. “Anybody who claims otherwise never played them.” He further clarified that no country, to his knowledge, has banned the game.
Vávra then confirmed that same-sex options for in-game romance are present and notes that they were in the first game as well. However, he noted that this was optional content, explaining that players are entirely responsible for their in-game decisions.
A post on X from Daniel Vávra, the creative director of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 – X, @DanielVavra
“KCD is an RPG, you are responsible for your decisions,” the director said. “If you want Henry to try a same-sex adventure, feel free. If you don’t want to, you don’t have to. All affairs are (and were in KCD1) purely optional. The characters are perfectly aware, that it was a forbidden sin.”
The inclusion of diverse characters, such as Musa, an educated noble from the Kingdom of Mali, was also explained. Vávra noted that Musa’s presence is central to the story and creates dynamic, contextually accurate interactions.
“Everything displayed corresponds to the morals and social norms of 1403 Bohemia and is only there to make an interesting story, and not at all to appeal to a ‘modern audience,’” he said.
7/10 Musa came to Bohemia with an invading army as a member of the royal court of King Sigismund, whom he met thanks to his engagement at the court of Sultan Bayezid. He’s an educated noble and renaissance man from the Kingdom of Mali.
— Daniel Vávra ⚔ (@DanielVavra) January 19, 2025
Former World of Warcraft team lead Mark Kern, known in the gaming community as Grummz, added further context by sharing details from a player who completed the game.
BREAKING LEAK:
No, Kingdom Come Deliverance is NOT woke.
I received exclusive information from someone who has completed the game which clears up many rumors.
(Note, game director Daniel Vavra JUST posted clarification, he is 100% telling it to you straight)
According to… pic.twitter.com/qbalx6P4sm
— Grummz (@Grummz) January 19, 2025
According to this source, the controversial elements have been exaggerated. Kern revealed that romantic options, including the potential for Henry to pursue a same-sex relationship, are entirely optional and require deliberate player actions over a significant portion of the game.
The player reportedly described these storylines as treated with discretion and reflective of the societal taboos of the time. Intimate scenes, including a brief moment involving Henry and another male character, were said to last mere seconds, with all cutscenes remaining skippable.
“Based on this information, I would say the whole Kingdom Come: Deliverance thing has been blown out of proportion,” Grummz said. “The game is excellent, and everything is treated in proper historical context.”
A screenshot from Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 (2024), Warhorse Studios
Vávra also expressed disappointment at how some criticisms have been handled.
“We don’t want KCD to be used as clickbait by people who didn’t even play it yet,” he said. “The amount of hateful behavior is really sad and it will damage any cause associated with it.”
Will you be playing Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2? Sound off in the comments and let us know your thoughts!
Yea, Vávra went full corpo. I guess sure ESG/DEI money takes precedence.
What money? Even BlackRock has abandoned NetZero, the UN org pushing ESG and DEI. As has almost every other major investment firm. Without them, the scam doesn’t even have the *promise* of making money if people obey or the power to follow through on any threats.
EU have adopted a regulation to enhance the transparency and integrity of ESG rating activities. In November 2024, the European Parliament and Council have adopted Regulation (EU) 2024/3005 on the transparency and integrity of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) rating activities (the “Regulation”).
I respect the developers’ response. This is all I ask for: include optional content if you want, but don’t shove it in my face, force me to embrace it, or lecture me about it.
It does mean that completionists have to skip over stuff. Some of us who buy a game want to play the entire game and will go through multiple times to see all the choices, so it’s a slap in the face to us.
I’m not sure that’s a realistic expectation of a game though. I would rather that NO game I played ever depicted same-sex carnal acts, but every single choice in any given game is not going to reflect the totality of my values, or yours, or anyone’s. For example, I played Skyrim to near-completion twice, but in both instances I skipped the Dark Brotherhood questline because I couldn’t stomach role-playing as a murderer. I didn’t consider it a slap in the face; just more optional content with which I chose not to engage.
You can certainly spent your money how you wish, but be mindful that if you buy a game from this company, you are also monetarily supporting Plaion & Embracer group, two DEI companies that overtly support hiring based on diversity quotas, skin color, and Plaion is the company that’s handling the community management on Steam and lists things like white supremacy as something they don’t tolerate while not even mentioning black supremacy.
We deserve what we tolerate.
Oh I won’t be buying it either way. I don’t enjoy games with combat systems that require hours of rigor to learn its subtleties. And I agree with your last sentence.
Seems fair to point out that this IS different because you were still willing to buy Skyrim and just skip the Dark Brotherhood, but you outright won’t buy this game.
Maybe because Skyrim had a LOT to offer and the Dark Brotherhood is a relatively small section, whereas once you detect woke, they’ll shovel it in well beyond your ability to tolerate.
Well I’m not buying this particular game because I don’t enjoy the combat system, as I mentioned. But you’re not wrong about publishers’ inability to remain satisfied with just a wee bit of wokeness. To use BioWare as an example, I started noticing it with Inquisition — for the first time, there were no attractive female characters except the one that was limited to gay romance only. But the game was so good that I was able to kind of play around the parts that frustrated me. I didn’t realize then that they were just dipping their toes in the waters of wokeness to see how much I’d tolerate, before doing a cannonball into the deep end with their next release.
So all that’s to say, I get it, and I don’t disagree with the philosophical stance. I’m just not sure yet that this particular game is another example of it YET. I’d need to know more about the context — is it tied to a main quest, is it framed as an act of deviance, etc. — before I could definitively invoke the Right of Annulment.
If you don’t expect me to play the entire game, don’t charge me for the entire game.
“If you don’t want to watch the stuff we put out, just skip it.”
I’ll do you one better and not buy in the first place. Then I won’t have to skip anything.
I’m not giving money for this game simply because of how the moderation has been handled on the forums – you’ve got a racist community manager deliberately listing things like white supremacy that they “won’t tolerate” while not listing black supremacy. There’s an obvious agenda there at Plaion (parent company), and John Trent has covered in a YT vid how Embracer Group takes skin color / diversity into consideration during the hiring process. I’m not supporting companies like that.
Vavra can keep his alphabet game. He already called anybody who had a problem with this mid-century Germans. Also really disappointing to see Kern shilling for this garbage.
I dont like this game they are playing, all of this could have been solved right away with an Oficial response right away, all this bait and switch is not to my liking.
Honesty is something that needs to be established, in both sides
He’s treating same-sex options as if they’re just as normal and acceptable as heterosexuality. They’re not. Games like Stardew Valley got away with it sometimes because they weren’t story-driven and came out in a time when we were far more ignorant, as a culture, about what was happening. Today, it’s not gonna fly for a lot of gamers. You can’t include everyone’s ideas, since not every idea is good or worth including.
And how is the sin aspect going to work out? I’ll bet you any amount of money that the mean ol’ Church and those ignorant Catholic or Orthodox peasants are going to break out the pitchforks, while one or two “enlightened” characters will talk about how there’s nothing wrong with it and “Jesus wouldn’t care about such things”, or whatever.
This also makes me wonder how reliable Grummz really is on this stuff. I know he means well and he’s done some great things by bringing real abuses to light, but he seems pretty soft here.
So Varva finally buckled his knee, sad, I don’t blame him really, he was fighting wokeness when it was considered cool and was harassed day and night by “activists”, he must have come under huge pressure for years to include this crap.