In previous reports, Fandom Pulse has covered both the Warhammer 40K backlash and Cynthia Williams’s recent resignation from Wizards of the Coast. As a wise monk once said, ‘three times becomes a pattern,’ as it’s revealed today by Mark Kern, veteran game developer and popular cultural advocate, Catalyst Game Labs is now under occupation by woke Marxist activists, who continue to plague Western culture through the destruction of properties like Battletech, Mechwarrior, and Shadowrun.
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On April 18th, Mark Kern started a new thread on Twitter, bringing attention to the latest act of subversion. It began around 2021 when “Faith McClosky,” a trans activist posing as an author, harassed Blaine Pardoe, a veteran writer for Battletech. McClosky convinced Catalyst to fire Blaine Pardoe, despite objections from the Battletech community, in an attempt to purge non-leftists from the Battletech franchise. A decent amount of background on McClosky can be found on Blaine Pardoe’s blog.
Mark Kern also mentioned that the incident that triggered Catalyst to lash out at their fans was recent leaked messages from Catalyst’s support team that involved a former Battletech author and Demo Team member going by the name of ‘Robin,’ who was doxing a community member by revealing their home address on Google Maps. According to the e-mail, Robin was quietly fired, and it looked like no one would hear about this incident.
But when the leaks came out, the community managers went into a frenzy, blocking anyone who mentioned the incident, including OtterPops, a longtime Battletech supporter who withdrew said support in the wake of this mass purge to cover up unlawful behavior by one of their former employees. The question lies as a result of this situation: Was Catalyst seeking to re-hire Robin once the outrage blows over?
The probable answer to that question lies with a critical community manager who has directed traffic to slowly subvert and occupy Battletech known as Rem Alternis, who, according to a recent interview with Sarna, played a total of TWO Battletech games! So how did Rem Alternis successfully turn Battletech into a skin suit to preach Marxist propaganda? Mark Kern gave a detailed scenario of how Rem Alternis accomplished this by taking over the subreddit r/Battletech and the Battletech Demo Team.
To summarize the situation, Rem Alternis, under the blessing of Catalyst, utilized threats and social engineering plots to remove apolitical moderators from both r/Battletech and the Demo Team and replace them with Marxist activists. It was pretty evident that Rem Alternis had every intention of re-hiring Robin, who said he was carrying a firearm and openly threatened non-leftists, calling them ‘Nazis.’ Now, the Battletech community is under occupation by communists.
So with three mainstream tabletop publishers under the occupation of woke activists, many other tabletop publishers such as Paizo, R.Talsorian, Frog God Games, and others should be on high alert for woke activists planning on taking over the entire industry just like they did to movies, video games, and music backed with ESG investors. There are also independent game developers working on various projects ready to step in should the need arise, and fans are highly encouraged to support and buy their products, especially when there is a crowdfunding campaign.
As for the franchises already under the thumb of woke activists, who will control the product for the foreseeable future, is it time to walk away from those franchises like audiences have done with Disney? Yes and no. Any new releases from Games Workshop, Catalyst, and Wizards of the Coast should not be purchased under any circumstances. To quote Brian Niemeier, “Don’t Give Money to People Who Hate You”. Instead, invest in one of the earlier back catalogs of these respected franchises, as the good thing about tabletop games is with long-running franchises, gamers can revisit past rulesets and play exciting campaigns and adventures using said rulesets. This aspect of using older rulesets became the basis of the Old School Renaissance (OSR) movement.
In the case of Battletech, a longtime aficionado of the franchise and popular YouTube personality, Razörfist came out with a video in December of 2023 to show you how to enjoy Battletech without having to give Catalyst one red cent:
With these three incidents happening so close together, are we about to see GamerGate 2 spill into the tabletop industry? With the video game industry heating up with the Stellar Blade slander and the new Pokemon Go! Controversy, we might see the tabletop situation come to a head in a few weeks.
What do you think of Battletech and Mechwarrior being occupied by Marxist activists led by Rem Alternis at Catalyst Game Labs? Please leave a comment and let us know.
NEXT: RazörFist Announces Ghost Of The Badlands Retail Edition Through Arkhaven
Paizo is already woke.
I did wonder why the Marxists spend so much time and effort to capture comic and game companies, but I suppose:
“First they came for BattleTech …”
I saw the new pilot card that gives the sex as “they/them” and figured that the Pardoe takedown was the first knee bend that gave the social justice warriors power over Catalyst Games. Good thing I still have my mint condition 4th Edition! No gender confusion there.