"We made a series of mistakes": GOG apologise for emailing Nazi symbols to people in newsletter about Slavic fantasy game

Said game's devs hope the situation "will make people more aware of the history and modern meanings of these symbols"

Retro-focused game sellers GOG have apologised after sending out a newsletter featuring runes which have long served as Nazi symbols. The symbols appeared in the subject for an email promoting The End of the Sun, an adventure game about a Slavic fire mage who also dabbles in time manipulation.

As shown in the post below, the email's subject line followed the phrase "Slavic adventure" with four runes. The final two can be interpreted as Proto-Germanic Sowilō runes symbolising the sun or as a double Siegrune, the symbol of the Nazi German Schutzstaffel (SS) and one subsequently adopted by later white supremacists and neo-Nazis. GOG are calling it an "unfortunate visual association".

"We are sorry for today’s newsletter," the storerunners wrote in a post put up on June 5th. "We made a series of mistakes: We created an unfortunate visual association by placing the runes incorrectly, we used the wrong logo for The End of the Sun, we did not check the display of the newsletter on mobile devices - which came out worse - and we didn’t port the feedback from our German QA to other languages. While half our email base received this email, we stopped the send-out as soon as we noticed the error. We are now revising our review process to enforce more checks and catch these mistakes earlier."

On Reddit, an unidentified GOG representative painted a less vague picture of what happened, writing the following:

The Sowilo rune is part of my cultural and historical heritage. As a Pole, I am fully aware of both its history and the sensitivities surrounding it. Its use in this promotion was intended solely as a reference to the sun, which is central to the game being promoted. What was displayed in several devices as doppelrune is out of our control. ᛋ was displayed as ϟ on several devices (might display for you differently here as well just letting you know). We should pay more attention to checking it on different systems and devices. I also recognise that placing two such runes next to each other could create an unfortunate association with symbols used by the Nazi regime. This was noticed before distribution, and out of respect for local sensitivities, the material was not sent to the German community.

At the same time, I do not believe that symbols with a history spanning more than a thousand years should be defined solely by their misuse in the modern history. Allowing that would mean accepting that those who corrupted these symbols now own their meaning. As a Pole, I have every reason to treat this history with seriousness and respect. Precisely because of that, I reject any suggestion that this promotion carried an extremist message. It did not. It was a reference to the historical symbol of the sun, nothing more.

The End of the Sun's developers, a Polish couple going by Kinga and Kuba, have since posted their own lengthy statement addressing the newsletter controversy, in which they emphasise that they've got no connections to neo-nazis.

"First of all, we do not use any SS symbols or 'the Nazi swastika' in the game," they wrote. "At one point in the game, we explain that the swastika was an ancient symbol (still used today in India, for example) that was later adapted by the Nazis, but we were completely certain we did not want to use those specific symbols in our game. In the newsletter, GOG placed the SS symbol next to the phrase 'Slavic adventure', which makes things even worse. GOG also mistakenly used our old logo.

"We want to emphasise that as developers, we have absolutely no control over how GOG's newsletters look. We assume someone at GOG simply wanted to add some 'cool' looking Slavic symbols without beforehand checking what those symbols mean in modern culture. Unfortunately, these mistakes created a horrible impression, linking both our game and Slavic culture as a whole to a terrifying ideology. Even though we had no part in creating this newsletter, we are extremely sorry for this misunderstanding, as we feel a sense of responsibility for how Slavic culture is promoted after dedicating the last few years to it."

As for why GOG using the old logo was a mistake, the developers explained that the earlier logo design contained a kolovrat - another Slavic rune related to the sun that has become linked to the Swastika, the most recognisable symbol of Nazism. A symbol resembling the kolovrat appears in the GOG email subject line.

"Yes, we used the Kolovrat symbol in the game, but we treated it as a symbol of the 'God of the Sun' or simply the 'Sun'," the developers wrote. "In the game, we even acknowledge as a trivia fact that some ancient symbols were co-opted by the Nazis, but we never used the Nazi swastika or the double S symbol. Our kolovrat symbol was based on historical sources of ancient statues."

The devs continued that they opted to change the logo symbol to a more innocent rosette design last year, claiming that pushback from potential reviewers "especially in Russia and Germany" made them aware of the symbol's Nazi links.