TLDR: The creator of factorio is scum. Don’t support this shitbag with your cash. Pirate the game if you want to play
Does anyone have a reasonably objective article on this topic? It’s the first I’ve heard of it. The sources linked and comments so far all seem to be opinionated and/or have an agenda.
It’s too late, for me, anyway. I’ve bought Space Age and had Factorio before that, so I’m going to continue to play it. But if there’s substance to this, or a rebuttle, I’d like to know.
Just found this Interview with Dev after this incident.
https://nichegamer.com/factorio-founder-kovarex-interview-cancel-culture-and-secret-support/
Don’t know ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ how true is this article though. Already bought the game.
Interesting. Thanks.
I don’t see the justification for the title; it seems to be trying to equate koravex with Bob Martin, because the former quoted the latter, and then got into a fight on Reddit over it.
Has anyone made accusations of experiencing sexism, racism, or misogyny at the hands of koravex? Anything? Groping or undesired innuendo at a conference? Is the “history” entirely contained in quoting Bob Martin on a topic entirely unrelated to any political position, an then getting in a fight about whether people can have technical merit divorced of their political positions?
koravex should stay off reddit and X. They’re toxic, combative, and tend to bring out the worst in people.
I might add for a bit of context… “Uncle Bob” is pretty famous in the software industry as an advocate for TDD (test driven development)… his conservative Trump bullshit is a relatively recent revelation. I’ve personally spoken positively of him in the past and heard the same from people I deeply respect.
Not everyone is aware of his political leanings and some of his technical lessons are still valuable so his name still gets spoken of highly by people ignorant of his politics.
I went into details in another comment but I think it’s really important to understand what life was like behind the iron curtain and how dissidents were canceled by secret police - that’s the world Kovarex and most Czechs alive today grew up in. Kovarex is on record disapproving of the canceling of some pretty shit people but, outside of knee-jerk comments, he hasn’t ever publicly endorsed sexism, racism, or misogyny. Also, he’s a developer, not a public speaker.
I might add for a bit of context…
Thank you for this. I was hesitant to say anything.
“Uncle Bob” is pretty famous in the software industry as an advocate for TDD (test driven development)… his conservative Trump bullshit is a relatively recent revelation. I’ve personally spoken positively of him in the past and heard the same from people I deeply respect.
I first met him at adevelopers conference in the late 90’s, and have one of his books on software architecture. He’s been influential in the field, and some of the things I’ve learned from him have had a huge impact on how I think of composition; I only became aware of his controversial positions in the last couple of years.
I admit to sympathizing with koravex’s reaction here, because I too feel like I can’t quote Martin, or refer to his theories, without being dirtied by association. It’s like that German saying: what do you get if you sit at a table with 9 Nazis? A table with 10 Nazis. I feel the frustration. It’s a if someone came out tomorrow and accused Linus Torvalds of a rape back in the 90’s. You couldn’t advocate Linux anymore without being accused of defending or supporting a rapist.
Not everyone is aware of his political leanings and some of his technical lessons are still valuable so his name still gets spoken of highly by people ignorant of his politics.
This is how I read koravex’s position at the start of the argument: that he either didn’t know of, and certainly didn’t care about, Martin’s political positions. Then he got angry about being attacked and that’s where things went pear-shaped. But this is the first I’m hearing about all this, and honestly the source article reads more like a hit piece than an exposé.
I went into details in another comment but I think it’s really important to understand what life was like behind the iron curtain and how dissidents were canceled by secret police
Yup, I read that in the interview. We’re in the middle of a contentious culture war in the US, with some pretty high stakes. Korovex has, unfortunately, used the wording of one side of that war, and there’s not a lot of gray area. For both sides, it’s either you’re with us, or against us, and both sides want to line the other side up against a wall.
For me, if Factorio is shown to be funneling money to Conservative causes, I’ll stop buying their products. Otherwise, I’m not going to stop buying a game because the lead developer quotes Bob Martin’s technical sayings.
well put. I admit that I’ve only been made aware of ONE cause Wube supports - Ukraine - and it matches my feelings.
koravex should stay off reddit and X. They’re toxic, combative, and tend to bring out the worst in people.
Yep, you right even Hexbear is better than Reddit LOL.
even Hexbear is better than Reddit LOL
Shit, that’s going pretty far, man. But, yeah, you’re probably right. If only barely.
the comments from kovarex in the article aren’t enough for you? I also just bought factorio about a month ago and loved it. Doesn’t seem like I’m going to be buying/playing space age now
This article is creatively interpreting everything to be evil, then calling it evil.
Literal claim from the article: “Then Kovarex defended that women shouldn’t be software engineers”
…and shows a message screenshot as proof where the first fucking sentence is Kovarex saying “I am not defending that women shouldn’t be software engineers”.
This type of extremely dishonest outrage farming is just another form of cyberbullying.
why are you cherry picking examples from the article? The next word in Kovarex’ statement about women being software engineers is but Also, what about all the other stupid shit he said? Are we supposed to ignore that?
It’s from resetera. It’s nothing more rage bait so SJWs will target individuals and why my earlier comment was removed. They already tried to cancel factorio and wube by flaming them on reddit in the past and a review bomb that ended up with close to 10x more positive reviews than negative once news got out about the bomb.
That’s literally not what the article even said.
“After it was pointed out that Uncle Bob said that women shouldn’t be software engineers, kovarex defended him. After all, Uncle Bob might have some valid arguments as to why women shouldn’t be software engineers and it would be unfair to label him a bigot:”
If you read deeper Kovarex has a really deep seated dislike of what he perceives as cancel culture after growing up in a society that disappeared dissidents. I think he needs to work on that but he hasn’t defended what Uncle Bob said (contrary to what the article states) but disapproves of canceling anyone for what they say.
There are valid reasons to be mad at Kovarex because some heinous people really should STFU and he opposes that but not because he endorses what they’re saying - just that they should be free to say it.
I honestly think if someone sat down and carefully explained what modern cancel culture is and how it differs from secret police disappearing professors in the middle of the night then, in time, he’d likely change his tune.
Maybe the opinion that cancel culture is a terrible social construct and limits peoples’ ability to reason and reach full conclusions is actually apparent here.
Cancel culture promotes trigger-happy boycotts too often. And is not conducive to societal improvement of parties since now they are more isolated and more polarized.
Article for the sake of stirring up drama. Uncle Ben is a bad person, but that doesn’t mean he can’t have an opinion that someone likes (for example the development video mentioned in the FFF).
I also understand he is not a native English speaker and some words might get lost in translation. He is Czech, as I am, and I don’t really see anything wrong with what he wrote.
This is “mildly interesting” at most.
This entire exercise is an example of cancel culture, and the weaponization of wrong think. This is exactly the problem that the factorio developer identified.
If guilt by association, and abandonment of good work of bad people are the rule of the day, you better not fly an airplanes, or use any satellites…
Yes and you morons already tried review bombing the game over it but failed lol. All you over at that instance are just trolls anyway. Go fuck yourselves.
Just noticed you linked to resetera. The site that’s so notorious for stirring up shit that nobody takes them seriously.
All you over at that instance are just trolls anyway.
… blahaj.zone?
Yes. They federate with hexbear and take away the LGBT of people that are not their opinion.
Report this shit for Brigading
Reported this shit for brigading. I know another idiot OP to block.
Notch back in the day, now this dude who I had immense respect and admiration for. At least we still have Kyzrati (please no jinx). And I swear to God if Tarn or Zach ever fall from grace…
This article is written with a very serious slant - the situation is more complex than it lays it out. There are more neutral sources that have written in depth on Uncle Bob’s comments and Kovarex’s response. I think it’s always wise to query a few different view points on such heated topics.
Edit to Add: sag linked a pretty good article above, I’ll relink it here: https://nichegamer.com/factorio-founder-kovarex-interview-cancel-culture-and-secret-support/
The political views of a recommended lecturer, and even his own views on cancel culture aren’t the issue in my mind. In fact I agree with some of the nuances there.
The notion of rejecting a software lecture for the views of the presenter is kinda dumb. I don’t know the content of the lectures, to be fair, but I assume any irrelevant personal views aren’t part of it. Lashing out at Kovarex for the recommendation is dumb too, arguably more so.
It’s the statutory rape comment that I don’t like, which affects the benefit of the doubt as far as his other stances go. Still, I don’t think Factorio, or even Kovarex necessarily, should be “cancelled” here. Any backlash for his own comments is fair though.
I see now my comment didn’t reflect that as I only meant to convey my own disappointment, which is also nuanced.
Claims over claims without proof.
There’s proof right in the linked post…
🤡
There is no proof there is only accusations and some BS screenshots of completely normal takes. Welcome to reality not everyone agrees with you. If you don’t want to play the game because of it, ok, your loss. But can you not post such BS blog posts.
“Completely normal” takes that are on the level of “I’m not racist, but…”. That is the proof.
A take can be common, pervasive, and bigoted.
It is a loss if someone doesn’t feel comfortable supporting or even touching the game after hearing this. It’s a beloved game that unfortunately, but deservingly, will be tarnished by the dev’s public views.
Im buying the game for all my friends now and tell them they can thank this post for it. (With dlc)
Hey buddy take your self righteous diatribe elsewhere you just said there’s no proof but there’s clearly stuff illustrating the author’s point in the link.
What you do with that info is your own business.
Kovarex’ message for which he is accused of sexism is just pedantry about the definition of “bigot”.
Given that all this is taken from a huge endless discussion of that post, picking out a weird pointless bit of pedantry not addressing the original baseless accusation and calling that “proof” is a major stretch. (also the original accusation it isn’t even shown, only paraphrased, which is weird)I don’t see the accusation of sexism having any footing at all if that is all of the “proof”.
The homophobia part is mixed. I think Kovarex did fall for the right-wing projection that homophobia is “pushed into” media, and that you will be cancelled on twitter or smtn if you don’t watch it.
Kovarex did however agree that if someone hates gay people, they are a bigot, and hating that homophobe in turn does not make you a bigot.I don’t think Kovarex is homophobic, he just fell for some weird right-wing talking points about popular media and twitter mobs. (Also this was 3 years ago, he might well have realized the mistake since then)
The racism is completely unfounded. I assume this is derived from the first part which seeks to apply guilt by association. FFF #366 quoted “uncle bob” who is described as “a racist, sexist and Trump supporter” by the accuser. I don’t think it matters so I will simply assume it is true for this matter.
Kovarex’ point is simply that quoting good advice is independent of who it came from. Saying “If Stalin had a good writeup on programming” that would not matter. He would quote it if it was good.
I don’t fully agree, quoting someone extensively like that does push people towards them, what I have seen done before is a simple disclaimer that “the person holds weird views so don’t mind finding that mixed in with their advice if you look them up”, something along those lines.
What I do not at all agree with is that it makes kovarex a racist or sexist.Guilt by association is a fallacy with its own wikipedia article, I consider the racism point dead in the water if that is it. I also consider the entire source extremely suspect for including that.
Finally, the rape part. I think this holds the most water out of the claims. I will quote it in full first:
- The male teacher preys upon and rapes the female student.
- The female teacher seduces and has sex with the male student.
It’s statutory rape regardless of the genitals attached to the adult in the situation.
kovarex:
“statutory rape”? A new sjw term?Yeah lol. Those darn two and half century old terms really scream “sjw” don’t they? /s
kovarex:
I always thought, that rape means that you assault someone against his will. If teacher seduces his/her student and the act is voluntary, we can’t really talk about rape right?First of, this is 6 years old now. Also I cannot find it anywhere, the only source is the screenshot in the linked page.
Now to me there are two main interpretations here. One is that the question is legitimate, the other being that the question is rhetorical. If it was rhetorical, I don’t understand the first question. Calling “statutory rape” and “sjw term” does not hold any arguments or dog whistles, it simply makes you look like you don’t know anything about this topic. Which is what I think is the case here. Kovarex has no idea what that term means, or really about the complexities of rape in a legal and moral sense.Assuming then that the second question is legitimate, I think it is fair to ask. In a colloquial sense in the ancient before times, rape meant something violent (probably, I’m not old).
Ofc then we were enlightened that you could be threatened, or drugged. And at that point it shifted to being consent-based. And if you then add an age or power hierarchy element, you also disqualify certain people from consenting.
At the end of that you hopefully come to the conclusion that calling it all some form of rape is sensible.
Either case, lawmakers generally have done that, and the resulting legal definition I assume is called statutory rape and might confuse someone hearing about that for the first time.I assume therefore Kovarex simply had no idea and learned a new thing there.
Immediately jumping to “swj term” does again remind me of the riling up that right-wing influencers do. If you are told constantly that “sjw” are inventing new words and pushing xyz into media then you do jump to that for every normal thing instead of thinking about it more reasonably.
To me it sounds like Kovarex was in the “alt right pipeline” at the time. I can’t speak about their opinions nowadays, but given the article doesn’t have anything else I have no reason to believe Kovarex followed through and somehow became a radical right-winger since.Here is the web archive for the rape comment.
Via
Which had/has links to other comments. Hope that helps.
Thanks, yeah. That confirms the accuracy of that screenshot.
Now the only thing missing is the context of the sexism one.
Why, you came here. I was here before you.
https://mindustrygame.github.io/ is the better option anyways.
It really isn’t. Not because it’s a worse game, but because it’s not the same game at all. Mindustry is a wave defense game that’s not about stress building and military focus; it’s a military-industrial complex game. Which is fine, but it’s not Factorio, or a better game, any more than Satisfactory is. They’re different games.
