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I'm not calling for his head as much as I'd just like this acknowledged, maybe an apology, if this does go deeper then I would be upset if ArenaNet continued to support him but I also really don't think these beliefs should go unchallenged or swept under the rug. And I didn't know about Ike Amade :(

don't share much more disturbing beliefs offline. And at that point, you have to start thinking about the work culture this creates. If you have someone anti-abortion at a company that's shown strong support for women's rights, how does it make your employees feel?

This is just on the public side - there are definitely some things we can be sure of (covid conspiracist, turning point supporter, that weird visa comment on linkedin) but I've rarely ever seen an example where people who engage with and share content on this level +

We can also be sure he's a covid conspiracist thanks to the video he shared unfortunately, and I'm also really not too confident that the LinkedIn visa comment was really meant as a joke.

I disagree with his assassination but I think it's extremely disrespectful to those he spent his whole life attaching and demeaning to pretend his life's work was anything but pure bigotry. Especially to the children who died from the culture of gun violence that he perpetuated vigorously.

Some of this is definitely less concrete than others, but I think it's safe to assume he is anti-choice, and given that the only political pages he follows lean this way it's hard not to assume the worst. I also really don't take kindly to his multiple shows of support for Charlie Kirk -

I'm not necessarily going after his job - I think people can change, and there's hope in making people confront their beliefs that hurt people, but I do think Something needs to happen here. I know we're heading towards a world where these beliefs are normalised but I still want to fight back

I found all this out completely by accident when looking up why Maclaine Diemer has been writing less and less for the game lately and wanting to know more about who's taken over but.. man, this is such a blow to my love for the game in its current state unfortunately. Music means so much to me.

I agree, but it will deeply affect how I engage with the game. The music of GW2 has always been one of the most important parts to me and I've been deeply in love with it for years, and I'm gutted that I know I won't be able to enjoy the new soundtracks anymore, especially with him now in the lead.

Bryan Atkinson is:
-Anti-choice
-Pro-controlling women
-A COVID denier
-Anti-immigration
-Extremely likely to be transphobic, xenophobic, racist, homophobic given the large amount of pages with these views that he follows on various platforms and has even endorsed
Please, we can't stand for this.

Unfortunately, I could go on for days with these screenshots. It's extremely obvious what kind of person GW2's lead composer is, and if Anet are as principled as they claim then it's shocking he's been given a promotion despite this. These beliefs are appalling and cannot belong in our community!!

Given all this, you have to really be doing mental gymnastics to assume this LinkedIn post was just a joke. @guildwars2.com Does this represent your company??

And the same thing over on his Instagram

More disgusting transphobia unfortunately

Some of these pages have been inactive for a while too. He's always been like this, and yet ArenaNet welcomed him back with open arms expansion after expansion, eventually promoting him. Disgusting

More of the kind of pages he follows. Truly disturbing, far-right stuff that has no excuse

@jebrounity.bsky.social @kroof.bsky.social @aurorapeachy.bsky.social @indigolinde.bsky.social @bobbystein.bsky.social @rubi514.bsky.social @thyweepingwillow.bsky.social Bringing this to your attention (see thread for more). It's deeply threatening to the integrity and openness of our community!!!

This is all very much contrary to ArenaNet putting out a statement in support of Roe vs Wade 3 years ago, which I hope they still stand by. I'm going to tag some community figured who expressed support for this in the hope they can maybe help to do something:

I want to share my concern with some of the bigoted, fascist beliefs held by Guild Wars 2's new lead composer, Bryan Atkinson. One quick look through his socials and it's very clear to see what kind of person he is.

I have an answer to this that's about 2 discord messages long if you're still up to DM

I'd argue it's worth trying regardless. I don't think there's a realistic worse case scenario that's worse than anything that's already happened/will happen if we continue with the status quo. I just don't see how else we break the cycle we're currently in

Ohhhh, I see. I think I don't necessarily think of the French community as smaller is the thing, but that's a thing from going to a disproportionate amount of LANs and realising I don't know most of the teams (it's honestly less of a subsect of the international community and more of its own thing)

I think my main problem is I keep saying "do it like the CDC" and no one yet seems to even address that, it feels frustrating to present a solution that no one seems to want to acknowledge. The people who know how to make this work are right there

...Didn't realise people got so riled up over numbers, fair enough. Would be an interesting case study to use in developing something that comes next, but I still think the SSC name has too much trouble attached for it to be effective

building and promo outside of when it was getting flamed I guess? I feel like connecting general TO communication with community safety would do a lot of good

The CDC way I guess. They're a more effective safety org than anyone else, but it's visibly just "the french TOs and org heads meet up and agree on things". If it's true about there being pretty big content creators on the ssc council previously, it wouldve been good for them to do more trust +

Kind of, I guess what I'm getting at is so much of the community is reliant on the site that the two can become the same thing sometimes

CDC bans on Sendou is easily the best thing to happen to community safety in the past year though

The problem with that is it's an implied connection I guess. I think it basically comes down to being about how people feel and the little things that we can do to make them feel better about safety

I think we have to work towards something that's overwhelmingly trusted and respected and I just don't think SSC can claw its way up to thank after the past few incidents, people having their cases doxxed, and now the video

I'd argue it's two different things. SP isn't much of a leap from X power in terms of assigning value to a number that people don't really understand and Sendou had immense goodwill towards him that made the whole thing work easily, but it's also a completely different kind of situation