GOG Issues Apology After Sending Out Emails Containing Nazi Symbols
GOG, the DRM-free PC games platform previously known as Good Old Games, has publicly apologized on X for a “regrettable visual association” found in its recent newsletter for the game *The End of the Sun*. This association involved the Proto-Germanic Sowilō rune, meaning “sun,” and the emblem used by the Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS) during World War II.
The newsletter for *The End of the Sun* was sent out around June 5, and it’s probably best to just show you what the email looked like.
Yes, that’s the double SS “Siegrune” symbol, which was designed by Walter Heck for the uniforms of the Schutzstaffel corps. Naturally, this raises questions about why GOG would send out a newsletter featuring a Nazi symbol, especially since *The End of the Sun* was created by a Polish couple.
The developers of *The End of the Sun* expressed their confusion in a Reddit comment, stating they were equally surprised to see the logo and symbols in the newsletter: “Really, we were also totally surprised when we saw the logo in the newsletter (the old logo) and the symbols next to the newsletter title. But we are in contact with GOG, and we believe this was like an AI recommendation to use those symbols, or something like that. We will ask GOG to just clarify things in the next newsletter.”
GOG acknowledged the issue in a post on X, admitting, “We made a series of mistakes: We created an unfortunate visual association by placing the runes incorrectly, we used the wrong logo for *The End of the Sun*, we did not check the display of the newsletter on mobile devices – which came out…”
In a follow-up comment on Reddit, GOG explained that the display issues were beyond their control: “What was displayed on several devices as doppelrune is out of our control. ᛋ was displayed as ϟ on several devices (might display for you differently here as well just letting you know).”
Honestly, it seems unlikely that GOG intended to create a controversial marketing strategy by linking a game to the Nazi party. Given that Walter Heck’s Siegrune was adapted from the Armanen sig rune, which itself was derived from the original Sowilō rune, it’s easy to see how this could have been a simple oversight regarding how the symbol displayed on different devices.
The most ironic part of this situation is that the developers of *The End of the Sun* mentioned in their Reddit post that they “even explain that some ancient symbols were adapted by the Nazis” within the game. It’s unfortunate that they went to such lengths to address this topic, only to find themselves entangled in a marketing mishap that was out of their hands.
