They ran the ss symbol - except for the campaign in Germany where nazi symbolism is illegal - so they knew what it was and ran it anyway

People responded to this going "hey dude wtf" and the official response has been...not smart

And now it is blowing up

The SS symbol is not a dogwhistle. Dogwhistles are meant to be covert and unassuming to anyone except those within the neofascist subculture, like 1488 and triple parenthesis.

Unlike those dogwhistles, meant only to be understood by an ingroup, the SS lighning bolts are as explicit as a swastika. I would go even as far as to say that they are more egregious than a swastika, as swastikas have cultural signification in some countries that might muddy the waters when interpreting the symbol alone. The SS bolts have no such excuse.

Also it wasn't an automatic filter on german emails, it was a filter on german speakers. German emails configured with english as their language did receive the email, according to comments here.

There is no benefit of the doubt to be allowed here. If they don't have an extremely solid explanation (and LLMs aren't that, they know how to recognize actual dogwhistles, they wouldn't output actual 1940s nazis imagery so famous & standard, unless instructed to), then either someone needs to be fired, or we as the public need to understand that there is complacency for actual nazism within this company.

Again, this isn't some little dogwhistle people might be confused about. This is standard 1940s nazi imagery, on the same level of significance as the swastika. I knew this as a child in the 2000s, as a kid who never paid attention in class and found history to be the most boring topic.

I much prefer the gog approach as a video game platform in a huge way. I would like to see this approach of selling games win.

But they fucked up so massively here... Accidental or not, the iconography of the twin lightning bolts in an international context is so clear.

They need to make their apology so loud and so clear, that any little nazlets thinking this is a sign from someone on gog staff, instead realize that there is no safe space for their hatred there.

You cannot be ambivalent to maybe being associated with Nazis in the minds of some people. That's how you get Nazis.

One of the main issues with all that is that there was a review, and they didn't sent it to Germany because of that review. So no, it was known, it is not a niche dog whistle, and I for one am not blaming the intern (if any) who did it, but rather the moderator who allowed the letter to go

Even if it was sent maliciously and intentionally, if they apologize and it doesn't happen again I'm not going to get bent out of shape. These email campaigns are run by peons low on the totem pole and hardly get any thorough review.

It is not run by peons. Email marketing is a major source of revenue for companies. It's one of the main pillars of communication that's directly to actual engaged customers.

At my job, the ad copywriters, the PR team and the email marketers control all messaging of the brand. Everyone else (the website content team, the social media team, etc) goes to them for validation and content checks. It's a big deal.

I don't think it was malicious but it's still a big gaffe, especially coming from Poland, of all countries.

I think it was just someone using that symbol thinking it was an innocuous Nazi reference, not understanding that it holds nearly as much significance as the Swastika itself to some people.

PR Firms and marketing departments aren't especially bright, so they need to understand that there has been a tightening of perception on that front, and ANY Nazi imagery is considered inappropriate for marketing purposes.

I don't get all this noise too, being nazi is finally cool again! Those woke lefties want to break all good things again...