Alt-right game steals assets from LGBTQ indie title

An alt-right group has stolen and repurposed assets from a LGBTQ game purely to harass the developers.

Developers of Goodbye Volcano High, an indie game that explores queer culture through the lens of a 2D story adventure game, are dealing with a unique type of problem — bizarre alt-right posters from storied hate website 4chan are stealing assets from the game to create an anti-LGBTQ game of their own.

In a report by Kotaku, bigots from the /vg/ board of 4chan have taken to stealing and repurposing art and assets from Goodbye Volcano High for their own game that espouses anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, named Snoot Game.

Some context: Goodbye Volcano High is a narrative-driven 2D game from Canadian developer KO_OP, a game developer cooperative. The game has players playing as Fang, a non-binary dinosaur in high school, during a period of extreme stress — the world is ending, and you have to choose how to spend your final days.

Goodbye Volcano High offers a vehicle for under-represented voices to be heard, offering stories that don’t fit into other games, but are important all the same. The game was announced to great applause during the 2020 Sony digital showcase, but since then, has also attracted the ire of some unfortunate spectators.

Posters on 4chan latched onto Goodbye Volcano High as target for ridicule and harassment, not least of which is due to the developers pro-LGBTQ beliefs. Some posters decided they’d make the game better, which eventually led to Snoot Game’s development.

Goodbye Volcano High is a narrative, visual-novel styled game. Picture: KO—OP

Snoot Game re-purposes, and in some cases outright steals, art and assets from Goodbye Volcano High, but twists the narrative into an alt-right message. Instead of playing as a non-binary dinosaur, you play as a character that “detransitions,” which is a harmful and hateful alt-right talking point regularly spit out to harass trans people. In another macabre example, players can shoot up their high school.

Since the games announcement in 2020, KO_OP has suffered continuous harassment and “hate-raids” from the 4chan community: “When Goodbye Volcano High was announced, it reached a lot of people, many of whom decided to create their own fan works in response to it,” the studio told Kotaku. “Some of these creative responses were made to mock and attack us and our work. As a result, the team at KO_OP experienced a significant amount of direct transphobic and homophobic harassment that persists to this day.”

Goodbye Volcano High is scheduled to launch this year.

Written by Junior Miyai on behalf of GLHF.