A Baldur's Gate 3 mod that aimed "to reduce diversity" in the game has been deleted from major modding platform NexusMods.
This article contains spoilers for Baldur's Gate Act 2 and 3, as well as descriptions of anti-LGBT sentiment.
In a statement earlier this week, the site confirmed that the uploader of the mod 'Ser Aylin' had been banned from the platform, stating that "this appears to be a throwaway account created to upload a mod that attempts to skirt our community guidelines."
The mod in question swapped the gender of Dame Aylin, a character that appears throughout the game's second and third acts. Aylin is in a relationship with another NPC, Isobel, and the ramifications of that relationship are felt throughout the game, depending on the choices you make throughout Act 2.
However, because Aylin and Isobel are in a same-sex relationship, they were just some of the characters targeted by an entire mod pack aiming to remove any attempts at diversity from the game. A recent post on Reddit attempted to raise awareness of an entire mod pack that aims to change the gender, sexuality, and sometimes physical appearance of any character that the pack's creator deems does not fit the "medieval status quo." Putting to one side for a moment the fact that Baldur's Gate 3 is a fantasy game that begins on a reality-jumping spaceship; presumably, the pack's creator has chosen to forget that many of the sexualities and identities they're attempting to erase have been well-documented since the time of the Ancient Greeks, and are also known to have continued to exist through the European Dark Ages.
Continuing its statement, NexusMods said, "We are for inclusivity, we are for diversity. If we think someone is uploading a mod on our site with the intent to deliberately be against inclusivity and/or diversity then we will take action against it. The same goes for people attempting to troll other users with mods deliberately to cause a rise."
The site also reiterates its right "to choose what content we do and do not want to host on our platform." Last year, after deleting a mod that removed Pride imagery from Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered, the site encouraged any users angry with its decision to delete their accounts. NexusMods has long made clear its stance that the removal of certain mods doesn't constitute censorship, merely a site-wide choice not to platform certain content.
