Following a recent (now deleted) tweet from digital distribution platform GOG.com, VG247 is pulling its support of the storefront for the foreseeable future.

In the past, our site has promoted GOG as a DRM-free alternative to Steam, and we’ve even supported the retailer with VG247-themed sales on the front page of the site.

Today, GOG tweeted out a promotional gif for Postal 2, which is not the problem. The gif contained an image of someone pissing on a headstone marked ‘games journalism’, which also isn’t the problem.

The problem is that the gif can be interpreted as a dogwhistle that panders to hate group GamerGate, which itself has been proven to lead to radicalism and even murder.

GamerGate has destroyed lives, and we’re very disappointed that GOG has furthered the divide between those who cover games and a vocal minority that hate games journalists, women, and minorities.

It could be that GOG didn’t know the significance of the dates on the headstone, but until we know the company is taking proper action to find out how this happened, we are pulling support.

Update: GOG.com has issued the following apology via Twitter:

“We’d like to follow up on our recent tweet about Postal 2 to share our apology and a few thoughts:

• The intention behind our tweet was to inform about a release known for controversial content.

• Unfortunately, we’ve failed to make the association between the image, the date, and an abusive movement.

• Our intention was never to hurt or condone hate.

Subscribe to the VG247 newsletter Get all the best bits of VG247 delivered to your inbox every Friday! Enable JavaScript to sign up to our newsletter

“We have removed the tweet now, we clearly messed up here.”