Stellaris “European only” mod pulled by Paradox

A Stellaris mod called the “European Phenotype and Names Only (White Humans)” mod has been pulled from the Steam Workshop by Paradox.

The mod removed all coloured characters from the game and provided only European names. This evening Paradox COO Susana Meza Graham issued a statement to clarify why the mod was removed and reiterate their rules of conduct regarding modding.

We have a few rules of conduct that have been in effect for the better part of a decade where racial slurs, among other things, are not allowed. We interpreted this particular mod as breaking those rules of conduct, however it would appear that the comments surrounding the mod, rather than the mod itself, were the biggest problem.

We welcome everyone to create all kind of mods for us as long as they comply with our rules of conduct and we expect our modders to help us keep the comment sections free of any racial slurs or other things that do not comply with these same codes.

To see details regarding our rules of conduct, please go to: https://bit.ly/1Wg1Zix
This is the last we will comment regarding this particular mod.

Susana Meza Graham
COO Paradox Interactive

This update came after a post from Eurogamer in which Paradox responded:

“We shipped the game originally with an accurate representation of humans, that is to say diverse in both ethnicity and personality,” a Paradox spokesperson told Eurogamer. “We embrace the idea that players mod the game to best represent how they want to play, we do NOT however wish to enable discriminatory practices.”

The mod author obviously has some strong views on race as it’s a particularly strange mod to spend the time creating, and as Paradox community manager points out, the mod maker had an agenda.

“We saw the mod, thought it wasn’t in very good taste, but let it remain. Then the creator of the mod decided to update the description of the mod to promote an “agenda” not related to computer games at all, and this was being clearly displayed on our product page. We decided it was a step too far and removed it. Eurogamer did not do a good job describing what exactly it was we removed.”