Spider-Man PC Modder Removes Pride Flags, Gets Banned

gamerant.com:

After Sony finally released Marvel's Spider-Man for PC, modders have jumped at the opportunity to add their own amazing creative touches to the game, like mods that increase New York City's draw distance and mods that make Spider-Man creator Stan Lee into the webslinger. But with Spider-Man now on PC, modding tools can get in the hands of the wrong people.

The designers at Insomniac Games built a New York City with the ideals of diversity and inclusivity in mind. As in real life, the city has murals that show off the personality of the people that live there and Pride flags in various places that LGBTQ+ individuals can feel accepted. One PC modder felt slighted by the inclusion and diversity of the city in Marvel's Spider-Man and created a mod with the intent of erasing the Pride flags from the game.

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A user on the PC Mod platform NexusMods uploaded a Marvel's Spider-Man mod that would replace the city's Pride flags and murals with American flags. As reported by PC Gamer, an investigation by the admins of NexusMods found that the mod was created by an existing user with a sockpuppet account (an alternate account mostly used to make statements someone would not normally say on their primary account) under the name of «Mike Hawk.» Admins then traced the account back to its original owner and banned both accounts. A similar mod was also uploaded to another mod site, ModDB, where it was also removed.

In a blog post, the admins detailed the circumstances that led to the outright ban after some community uproar. It cited that the sockpuppet account was purposefully made in an attempt to troll and start discourse. NexusMods stated that because there