One thing that always seems to get a lot of attention is when articles or websites covering the topic of censorship end up getting censored. The irony of that event becomes more of a joke than anything else but alas, within the past two years we’ve seen it happen frequently. Well, in the case of N4G they want to clearly make it known what kind of content is and is not allowed on the site to avoid fallouts where people yell “Censorship!” at them.

Things originally started with an interview that The Gaming Ground conducted with Mark Kern, the founder of the pro-consumer advocacy group for gamers and developers called League For Gamers. Kern is a decorated game developer who has worked on some of the biggest games in the industry, from Diablo to World of Warcraft and many other titles in between. However, since the interview covered the topic of censorship and Social Justice Warriors, after being approved by the community on the community-curated news aggregator, N4G, the administrator failed the article and removed it from the public’s view.

There was a huge kerfuffle about the issue, especially since #GamerGate has been very adamant about preventing censorship and standing against authoritative content control by third-parties over gaming content. There was also a debate about the lack of clearly defined rules considering that the article didn’t actually breach any of the stated rules on the site at the time.

Eventually a #GamerGate supporter named Andy Frogman managed to interview the administrator of N4G, named Christopher, and came to an understanding about the particular news item involving Mark Kern, as well as the rules and policies in place at N4G.

Following the discussion, Christopher recently made an update on N4G, indicating that some rules regarding submissions centering around “social” issues within gaming — this includes topics such as anything involving Social Justice Warriors, #GamerGate or social politics in gaming — have been modified in a blog post and that the interview on The Gaming Ground has been reinstated…

“After a very long discussion with @AndRyFrogman, I have decided to unfail this submission under the fact that the policies as outlined previously were not specific enough as it applies to submissions involving developers. In order to account for this, this submission alone will be allowed. “Furthermore, the rules associated with our policy on GamerGate, SJW, and similar social issue items have been updated – https://n4g.com/user/blogpos… – in order to help remove the confusion from this happening in the future.”

The blog post that Christopher modified now states what sort of submissions can be allowed and which ones can’t that deal with “social issues”.

According to the post, it’s stated…

“Submissions of this type will be allowed on N4G if it is a submission directly involving a developer, publisher, or similar individuals who are not journalists. “Submissions of the Social Issue type must be about how the Social Issue is or has impacted their job directly and is not just a personal opinion on Social Issues. “Submissions of the Social Issue type about organizations or people associated with an organization who are focused on one or more of the Social Issues are not allowed, even if the individual is a developer or publisher. This is an extension of the rule that we do not report on news about sites or communities that are not official game, development, or publisher sites or communities.”

It’s also mentioned that when in doubt to contact a moderator or administrator.

Ultimately, it means that content or topics like League For Gamers that focuses on lobbying on behalf of gamers and dealing with social issues that may be negatively impacting the game industry, won’t be allowed on the site unless it deals directly with a developer or publisher. Articles about video game journalists being corrupt? Well, those aren’t allowed on N4G.