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The speedrunning organisation Games Done Quick made a speedy U-turn on its decision to host a sponsored SNK stream last night after receiving a wave of negative online feedback over its choice to work with the Saudi-owned company (h/t: Rock Paper Shotgun)
Back in 2020, Saudi Arabia's Electronic Gaming Development Company (a subsidiary of the non-profit Mohammed bin Salman Foundation) acquired a 33% stake in the developer and has since increased its investment to 96% in the following years, becoming its majority owner.
However, this has proven controversial for many, both inside and outside the retro games community, with many highlighting Saudi Arabia's terrible track record on human rights, as well as the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's reported involvement in ordering the execution of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 (as outlined by the US Central Intelligence Agency).
As a result, when GDQ (an organisation with a fairly inclusive LGBTQ+ community) announced the sponsored stream yesterday, saying it was "excited" to work with the company, it went down about as well as you'd expect. On BlueSky, for instance, people highlighted how disappointing it was to see GDQ partnering with a company that has close ties to a country where homosexuality is still technically illegal, and also pointed out the dissonance of the stream following shortly after the Summer Games Done Quick event, where the organisation raised money for Doctors Without Borders.
In the past, Doctors Without Borders has worked to provide aid to people killed and wounded by Saudi-led coalition air strikes carried out in Yemen, making some question how the charity would feel about taking a sponsorship deal from a company linked to the same government responsible for those same strikes.
Because of the sheer volume of complaints, GDQ decided to end the stream early and issued a statement owning up to a failure to "conduct the level of review our community should expect from us" and stating it "will not accept the funds from this sponsorship or continue to work with this sponsor again."
Here's the full statement on the stream's cancellation:
"We have canceled our sponsored stream with SNK. We have heard the concerns from our community regarding this partnership, specifically the company’s majority ownership by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, and the human rights concerns tied to the Saudi government.
We will not accept the funds from this sponsorship or continue to work with this sponsor again.
GDQ is committed to supporting human rights and inclusivity, and we recognize that this partnership conflicted with those values.
We failed to conduct the level of review our community should expect from us and that was an oversight we deeply regret and take full responsibility for.
We especially want to apologize to the runners and our host on this stream, who had nothing to do with this decision and whose runs were disrupted as a result. This isn't a reflection on them and we are grateful for their understanding.
Going forward, we will review and strengthen our process for evaluating future sponsors and partners, including closer examination of companies’ ownership, to make sure they're aligned with our values."