ResetEra helped to get Catherine: Full Body trending on social media over the weekend by proclaiming that the game was “queerphobic” and “transphobic”. The game spread across various media outlets with various Social Justice Warrior groups condemning Atlus and the game’s creative director Katsura Hashino, for promoting “problematic” views. ResetEra, however, was not finished. The forum began organizing efforts to shame Hashino into either changing or censoring his content.

On February 16th, 2019, in a thread titled “The Phobic Crimes of Katsura Hashino, user Asaiyan wrote…

“Katsura Hashino possesses virulently offensive and phobic views on the LGBT community, women, and other groups. Since becoming a games director, he has celebrated and incorporated these views into his works. The following is intended as an itemized and educational record of precisely how these views have appeared in the last decade of Atlus video games.”

The main thread features a list of “offenses” that the ResetEra community claims are detrimental to the queer community.

Some of the evidence that they use to condemn Hashino include clips from Persona 3 and Persona 4, among other games, where they deem certain scenes to be “homophobic”.

After outlining Hasino’s offenses, the post goes on to ask “What can we do?”

It’s here that ResetEra begins to go through possible solutions on how to deal with Hashino, from naming and shaming, to organizing boycotts, to getting media outlets to join in on the offensive, with ASaiyan writing…

“The purpose of this thread is threefold. The first is to provide all the relevant reading on this subject in a single, convenient place for both current and future reference. The second is an outlet for members to continue their opposition to Katsura Hashino and the inclusion of his phobic views in games; ResetEra is the largest gaming forum in the world, frequented by many important English-speaking members of the games industry, and our words do, indeed, not fall solely on deaf ears. The final purpose is for members to continue to provide suggestions to the ongoing and important question – What can we do? Will you be joining the boycott of Hashino’s products? Will you raise the case of this latest offensive work to video game journalists and content outlets? What do you think should be done to most effectively work, however we can, for the removal of these phobic views from our games? I am eager to listen to your suggestions on this.”

Basically, ResetEra is trying to find ways to tarnish the good name of Katusra Hashino for no other reason than that the way he depicts content in his game is not aligned with their sociopolitical views.

The forum members were also celebrating how far up on the Google search results the name-and-shame thread was, indicating that it was “spreading the word” about the game director.

Any users who attempted to criticize the efforts of defaming Hashino were promptly banned.

Obviously many gamers outside of ResetEra have a huge problem with this, and feel as if the forum is trying to torpedo a man’s career for no good reason. As pointed out in the thread over on Kotaku in Action, the poll that ResetEra conducted regarding the boycott of Atlus’ products only totaled just over 2,000 users. The thread from user Gafsuckasalot sums up ResetEra’s boycott poll, explaining…

“Only 6.6% (out of 2000+ votes) would never buy another Atlus title again. Other percentages wouldn’t buy in specific situations (like Hashino games for example, at 12.6%. Or not just buying Catherine itself at 22%). 56% will continue to purchase without issue.”

So far Atlus has not addressed this hate-campaign toward Hashino, but other developers in the industry have mentioned in the past that ResetEra is a “hostile” and “unwelcoming” environment. Given that the forum is notorious for advocating censorship and doxing people they don’t like, it’s no surprise that they would stoop to this level in order to damage the career of a developer for creating content they don’t agree with.

(Thanks for the news tip Ebicentre)