I still remember when I first saw this on Reddit the name of ruawri (including the trans flag) was cut off and people were insulting her in the comments how she was self-absorbed, "character looks nothing like her", "she wishes she looked like that", "women always make themselves in video games", etc.
When it turns out she is trans now suddenly it's sweet and wholesome and got featured at Respectful Memes. People are hypocrites.
Still a dick move to be mean about it if she wasn’t trans. Even with the “different context” it’s just people being rude to someone who really does look like their character, which isn’t exactly cool either.
Holy fuck, but TomatoRogue is in another thread explaining to everyone how people all behave the exact same in all contexts and at all times! I don't know who to believe anymore.
I don't expect people who leave such comments would suddenly be supportive after finding out she's trans. For what it's worth, I missed the trans part at first and just thought it was neat.
Tbf, there were actual incidents where game news journalists gave preferential treatment to indie game devs they knew personally/went out drinking with/had dated. There was confirmation of that from leaked game journo email groups/chains. There was also concerns about preferential reviews being given to games that were running ads on a site. There was a small kernel about actual journalistic integrity concerns and what responsible disclosure means for games journalism.
Unfortunately that got swallowed up by a lot of bullshit:
absolute waves and waves of women hate. Jesus christ that's a lot of misogyny.
elitism about what qualified as a "real game" (I don't enjoy "walking simulators" but that doesn't mean they aren't video games)
people unable to understand that just like movie critics are judging different criteria to movie consumers, game critics can judge based on different criteria to gamers
weird group stalking behavior towards specific female game devs
attacking creators themselves rather than whatever elements of their games people found lacking