Gamers can’t stop laughing at ‘pathetic’ anti-LGBTQ+ Baldur’s Gate 3 mod
A homophobic Baldur’s Gate 3 mod has been swiftly shut down. (Larian Studios)
Gamers and moderators have swiftly shut down a deeply homophobic mod of role-playing game Baldur’s Gate 3 which had removed all in-game references to queer identity.
Baldur’s Gate 3, developed by Larian Studios and based on Dungeons & Dragons, was an instant smash-hit after it dropped in August.
The game heavily features LGBTQ+-friendly content, allowing players to fully customise their characters’ bodies, pronouns, genitals, and sexual and gender identities, and incorporating several NPCs who speak openly about being queer.
Despite the game’s resounding success, the LGBTQ+ references are clearly a problem for some far-right gamers, who have begun using a homophobic and transphobic mod that totally removes all queer references in the game.
The mod, called “ser Aylin”, makes a number of adjustments to the game, from “reimagining” a major lesbian character as a male to removing certain character creation tools.
The mod also makes deeply concerning adjustments to characters’ races by removing people of colour from the game.
Reddit user u/SignificanceNo2411 was the first to highlight the deeply problematic mod, alerting players that it is part of a broader “No Alphabets” mod pack and pointing out that creators have said it “ensures that the gender and sexuality of world NPCs match medieval status quo.”
Bear in mind that this game also features a miniature giant space hamster called Boo, mind flayers, and a genie that teleports players to an island of dinosaurs, but none of those details are altered to maintain the “medieval status quo”.
Other Baldur’s Gate 3 fans were eager to point out the same thing.
One Redditor sarcastically commented: “I can accept the dragons, alien frog people from beyond this dimension, and levitating brain-eating squid creatures, but GAY PEOPLE?!”
Another teased: “’Medieval status quo’, ah, like dragons goblins, and magic, yes.”
A third chimed in: “Insane how people draw the line at queerness and melanin levels in a land filled with frog people, hobbits, and tentacle monsters.”
And a fourth wrote: “Imagine being so incredibly pathetic and fragile that you felt the need to do things like this to your game in order to feel comfortable playing it.”
It would appear that word of the anti-LGBTQ+ mod spread quickly after that Reddit post because, within 24 hours of the mod going live on NexusMods (a popular website for modifying video games), “ser Aylin” was gone and the burner account that uploaded it was banned.
Unfortunately, the mod is not completely wiped from the internet and is likely still hosted on far-right platforms.
In a statement posted to the website’s forum, NexusMods moderators said that the mod was in breach of their community guidelines.
“The mod in question appears to reduce diversity in Baldur’s Gate 3 by taking a same-sex couple and swapping the gender of one of the partners to make them heterosexual,” the statement read.
“We are for inclusivity, we are for diversity. If we think someone is uploading a mod on our site with the intent to deliberately be against inclusivity and/or diversity then we will take action against it.”
This isn’t the first time that idiotic and homophobic mods have been uploaded – and rapidly removed from platforms like NexusMods.
Back in September, one angry gamer made a mod for Starfield which allows players to select their characters’ pronouns. The mod, which removed pronouns from the role-playing game, severely backfired, though, since it effectively made everyone who used it a non-binary character.
