Gaming developer Mark Kern has become an opinion leader on Platform X in recent months. He primarily criticizes game developers who are “too woke” in his eyes and has gained considerable influence since March 2024. BioWare’s new game, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, is a particular thorn in his side. But when he tries to rail against the game, Kern misses the point.
What did Mark Kern say? The game developer Mark Kern (formerly WoW and Firefall) appears on Twitter under the name “Grummz”.
On October 30th, around 9 p.m. German time, Kern excitedly posted: “LEAK!” BioWare and EA had been caught red-handed. The alleged review conditions for Dragon Age: The Veilguard were leaked; MrMattyPlays, for example, had to write his review under this NDA.
It wasn’t a conspiracy theory, but the truth.
Kern says: This is “access journalism”, only those who represent an opinion that EA approves of get early access to Dragon Age. But in return for access, you are not allowed to talk about wokeness in a review of Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Kern judges: That would be terrible and a corrupt system.
What Mark Kern tweets often ends up in Asmongold’s head a short time later and thus among his hundreds of thousands of viewers:
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Every reviewer has to write: Return to BioWare’s old form
That’s what it says in the post: The alleged review guidelines require the creator of the review to write that the new Dragon Age is “a return to BioWare’s old strength.” This formulation appeared frequently in the reviews displayed on Metacritic. The CEO of EA also tried to establish this narrative.
The reviewer is also prohibited from referring to transgender characters, surgical scars or woke content.
It is also recommended to avoid comparisons to God of War (via twitter).
Kern leaves no doubt about the accuracy of the report: it’s all crazy. They would shove their woke agenda down the players’ throats and you wouldn’t even be allowed to talk about it happening.
We can see the cursor
What’s the problem with the post? The reaction to Grummz’s post is devastating.
Just 90 minutes after Kern’s post, the person in question directly contradicts him: Matthew Schroder, MrMattyPlays, says: The post is “incredibly wrong” and it’s not the NDA he signed. Not even close (via twitter).
Others openly make fun of the fact that the cursor can even be seen in Grummz’s post. This cannot possibly be a serious NDA, but is clearly a text document that is still open.
Journalist Paul Tassi wrote a satirical version of Grummz’s post, in which reviewers who give it a 10/10 are promised $800 and a Dragon Age desk chair, while people who give it an 8/10 are promised just $50 and received an Anthem keychain.
In addition, Tassi’s version of the agreement reads: Breaking the agreement with EA carries the death penalty (via Twitter).
Grummz’s opponents celebrate his misstep and say the post shows that Kern is only stirring up hatred in order to get attention and make money. He would invent the things he was upset about himself.
How does Kern itself react? After just an hour, Grummz gave in: Well, the leak that sounded so great before actually came from 4Chan and there was no way to check whether it was correct or not.
After Kern even received a community note for his post that this was fake news, everything suddenly sounds completely different.
He just posted a rumor that turned out to be false. Sometimes rumors are just wrong. But he leaves it alone because he doesn’t hide his mistakes.
He thanks his community for helping him spot the error. So present it as if his community had recognized the error and not his declared opponents exposed it. They tell him that, with all due respect, he must be a complete idiot if he ever believed that.
Kern assures that he will make more effort to verify his information in the future. Long before its release, Mark Kern and Asmongold had already formed an opinion about Dragon Age: The Veilguard and identified it as a new object to rail against: Everyone loves the new Dragon Age, but two opinion leaders etch: “Woker, as you think”