For the last several years, we’ve heard from many critics that video games need to grow up. Now, as the medium has finally begun to evolve, developers are starting to touch on more serious issues. Whether it’s the military industrial complex, the horrors of war, or a teen girl’s journey to find herself and discover love, gaming seems to be attempting to make those pushes to prove it can stand on its own as any other form of art.

The most recent example of this is the new entry in the Deus Ex franchise titled Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, wherein the developers will attempt to tackle the issues of discrimination and segregation. One would think that this would make these critics happy, right? WRONG!!

Because after it came out that Deus Ex: Mankind Divided was to use the term mechanical apartheid as its tagline. The internet threw a fit. Claiming that the developers were racist and insensitive for using the term “Mechanical Apartheid”.

The backlash became so severe that the lead game director, Gilles Matouba finally had enough and posted his furious explanation on the Kotaku in Action subreddit. Mr. Matouba, pictured here on the left with fellow developer Christian Allen, happens to be a Black developer (not that it should matter), and has been shamed for wanting to tell a story about prejudice, hatred, discrimination, and segregation. Just because he was presumed to be white by ideology driven sociopaths who attacked him relentlessly.

This did not end with Mr. Matouba either, as Elias Toufexis, the voice of the game’s protagonist, spoke out as well on Twitter saying,

“How dare videogames attempt to explore serious social and political issues? Stupid totally white male game devs”.

More developers are going to come out against these perpetually offended keyboard warriors, who attempt to shame and bully creators into compliance. In fact, it’s already begun.

Just over a week ago a Jason Martin, a developer working on DOOM, posted this message on his personal Facebook before having to back peddle heavily after people attempting to have him fired for simply laughing at the stupid (and that’s what it is) criticism coming from Feminist Frequency.

When a person isn’t even allowed to mock the criticism his gets on his personal Facebook, there is a major problem.

What I find even more curious is the utter silence from journalists on this issue. You would think the attack on the livelihood of developers for disagreeing with the same narrative that attempted to poison gaming in the 90’s would be a hell of a story. Instead, the Deus Ex developer went to a subreddit that is attached to the #GamerGate consumer revolt. In my opinion, this is a major failure on the part of the games press, and truly interesting times we are living in.

Before I move on to my final point, I’d like to ask all the readers on this site who are involved in any way with the gaming community. Don’t do what former Escapist content creator, Bob Chipman did a few days ago.

Less than a day after the Charleston Church shooting in South Carolina, Bob thought it would be a good idea to make this series of tweets about the subject, attempting to use the deaths of nine people to attempt to shame the Deus Ex developer’s use of the term “Apartheid”. Now he did attempt to backpedal after he was called out for this terrible behavior, but in my opinion, it was nothing more than an attempt to save face.

So please from all of us here at GamesNosh, don’t use the deaths of real people in your Twitter argument about video games. The fact that I have to say this just shows how shameless and infinitely cruel some people can be.

Finally, the reason I wrote this long article was because I truly believe gaming is growing and evolving. With the approach of difficult issues such as rape, murder, or racism, they shouldn’t be handled with kid’s gloves. These are adult issues for adult audiences.

One must remember these are the people who stand behind Gone Home, a story about an angsty teen’s love life, or Life is Strange, a game about two teenagers, one of which looks like she walked right out of a Punk rock concert twenty years ago, with a personality to match. One has to wonder, do these critics really want gaming to grow to adulthood, or just move from childhood to those pesky teen years, attempting to rebel against the system that made them.

I mean, we just saw developer Tale of Tales attempt to lash out against the gaming community over the last few days.

If anything needs to grow up, it’s definitely not the games anymore.