The game Pillars of Eternity, funded by users on Kickstarter, offered some of its backers at the $1,000 level the option to create an non-player character in the game.

One backer told a joke, and the violent fringe left pounced.

The character Firedorn Lightbringer had this epitaph, via a backer:

Here lies Firedorn, a hero in bed.
He once was alive, but now he’s dead.
The last woman he bedded, turned out a man
And crying in shame, off a cliff he ran.

Note the story told here: a man was misled, taken advantage of sexually, and then in his depression after that sexual abuse, killed himself. This is a story that the Tumblr brigade loves to tell when it happens to a woman. But it happened to a man, so they were angered.

An angry fringe radical known as Ice Queen Erika, who frequently posts online her violent fantasies of mass murder (“I still plan to #KillAllMen. Not changing that goal ever.”), decided to start attacking the developers of the company, Obsidian.

Anyway, if the roles were reversed and a woman were misled into sex, and killed herself after, the Tumblr brigade would call it rape. But it happened to a man, so they declared the man was the one who has the wrong views on the matter.

The good news is Obsidian didn’t cave. They went to the backer and asked him what he wanted to do. He decided to change it to highlight the violent mindset of the critics:

Actually, there was a choice. They asked me if I wanted to change in light of what happened. I chose to change it so that they can concentrate on the game instead of this PR nightmare. They weren’t going to change it, they asked ME if I wanted to. I can find another platform to write my controversial crap, and I will. They, on the other hand, did the right thing and allowed me to decide the fate of the epitaph. I chose to turn into something that made fun of the bitch-bastards that were complaining.

They went above and beyond what I would have expected them to do.

The game seems to have been released in a pretty buggy state, but this story gives me some respect for these developers.

Here lies Firedorn, a bard, a poet
He was also a card, but most didn’t know it
A poem he wrote in jest was misread
They asked for blood, so now he’s just dead