hearts of iron iv its eternal fight against the alt-right and alt-left.
Hearts of iron IV is the fourth edition of the quite well-known (By strategy standards) ww2 grand strategy game series hearts of Iron and is developed by Paradox Development Studio and published by Paradox Interactive.
The game has a fairly devoted fan base, with close to 350k Reddit members, a steam page with mods that have been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times, and so many tactic-advice posts that, after reading them all, you could design a war-winning airplane in real life.
However, the community also features a rather dark side, a dark side that has been present in all the games of the series, but which has really grown with the explosive popularity of the 4th game, this dark side consists of the alt-right and to a certain extent, also the alt-left. Or to specify it more, Nazis and Communists.
Anyone who has spent enough time on the game's subreddit or steam discussions page has seen at least a few people speak rather favorably of the atrocities committed by the Nazis and the Soviet Union during World War 2, or even outright say that they wish for the nazis to have won ww2. Aka a community where Kanye would feel right at home.
Why hoi4?
But why HOI4? Well… actually, it makes perfect sense as to why HOI4.
As said earlier, HOI4 is a grand strategy game that takes place during World War II and features fascist and communist ideologies as well as the nations that adhered to them, including Italy, Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, etc. Now it might already be obvious why this game exactly attracts this kind of people. Changing history and letting nazi Germany win the war, or making the soviet union spread communism world-wide are thoughts very dear to their respective groups (The alt-right and the alt-left)
ALT-LEFT
Now as you might already expect, the alt-left isn’t the biggest issue with this game's community.
Sure, you can play as Stalin and Mao or even Trotsky , but as the soviet union was one of the winners of the war (Making the game not super popular for communist players wanting to change history, as the soviet union didn’t fall till at the end of the cold war; a time period not covered by HOI4), and as there is a lot of infighting within the communist parts of the community itself (Was Mao’s communism better, was Stalin’s communism better, etc etc) They often don’t pose a big threat for the overall health of the community, and when they try to justify communist crimes they are often far and in-between and quickly banned.
Alt-Right
This however, sadly isn’t the case with the alt-right part of the community, as they are way bigger in numbers and almost impossible to completely filter out because of that.
And they aren’t exactly always easy to spot. Sure, there are community members who straight up praise Hitler and the nazis and argue that the world would have been better if they had won the war, but most of them take a more sneaky and subtle approach, it might all start with a simple post of the world being conquered by Nazi-Germany and a caption saying “Rate my world conquest!” However upon inspecting the poster's profile, you will find that they are active in loads of alt-right subs, and before you know it they are justifying Nazi crimes in the comments. This is a lot harder for mods to track down as it requires the mods to look through less recent posts (They might only start displaying this sentiment 24h+ after their original post) which takes time, or they require the community itself to report these comments, which of course isn’t instantaneous.
Workshop
But the community forums aren’t the only place where these sentiments show up, the steam workshop is also a gathering place for these extreme groups, if you know what to search for or if you look carefully through the newest mods you will be able to find propaganda mods which often have comments supporting whatever propaganda is being spewed, these mods do of course get taken down and the comments are very far from all positive, but just like with the community posts, this takes time, and the damage can be rather quickly done if a young gullible player finds one of these mods.
The Good
But it’s not all bad, hearts of iron IV is one of the most popular strategy games of World War II, if not the most popular, and yet, if you don’t spend hours on the subreddit, workshop, and steam discussions, it is rather unlikely that you will be straight up confronted with nazi or communist propaganda, and this is all thanks to the majority of the community who don’t accept these groups and do everything they can to combat them. Be it by volunteering to mod, by reporting propaganda mods to steam, or by reporting comments to the mods. The HOI4 community has shown several times that it won’t accept these groups.
Ongoing Battle
HOI4 its fight against the extreme parts of its community is an ongoing battle, one that will most likely last or even become harder as extreme sentiments become more and more common in the world once again, but just as for the real world, I also have faith that the digital world will overcome these extreme elements and instead show the good in humanity.