Kingdom Come: Deliverance II (KC:D II), a historical roleplaying game set in 15th-century Bohemia, launched in February 2025 and sold over a million copies on its first day—raking in more than $220 million in profit. Developed by Czech-based Warhorse Studios, the sequel built on its predecessor’s cult status, but also stepped into the modern minefield of online cultural conflict.
Video games are an incredibly important part of the online world. They were around long before the internet, and simultaneously inspired some of its greatest developments and extravagancies. The biggest hosting domains in the world hold countless videos, images, and text threads packed full of gameplay, discussion, and occasionally less-than-friendly conduct. It won’t come as a surprise that they can also hold immense sway over real-world culture and conflict, and in turn can be influenced by those very same trends.
Over the last couple of years, the tendrils of the culture war have made their way into those communities built around video games. Many beloved titles have been attacked for elements now seen as problematic, sometimes in an erroneous or downright deceptive manner. “Woke,” a term that refuses to be defined by its very nature as a woozlish smear, is often seen in the captions of YouTube reviews or amidst colorful Steam comments. In the midst of this volatile environment, game developers find themselves with an unusually unified front: trying to sell their products to a community that might turn on them at the word of a few outspoken commentators.
To be clear, the vast majority of gamers are not antisocial, extremely disagreeable, toxic individuals. The stereotype of the white male gamer complaining loudly about every single minority group and female protagonist appearing in his games, vehemently raging against the threads of “DEI” infesting everything and ruining his life, is easy to fall back on and therefore best avoided. That said, much of the criticism that befell KC:D II is difficult or downright impossible to justify for any rational person. Some were seen to complain about the game’s optional romance routes with other male characters, or that the player had to take the side of the Roma and Jewish people featured in the story instead of allowing mobs to burn their homes and slaughter them in the streets – all, of course, for the sake of “historical accuracy” and “dispensing with modern morals,” and not because the people who wanted those things were trying to incite a reaction from others. They continued to loudly proclaim the game’s faults and ills for months before it actually came out. Enter: Daniel Vávra, the project’s lead writer.
In the leadup to the release of this game, Vávra did something quite atypical: he descended to earth and forayed into the battlegrounds of the culture war himself. Most companies don’t engage with public backlash to their products beyond a very bland, corp-speak announcement dictating what they will and won’t change. Vávra, though, targeted his critics on social media with devastating personal blows; in one exchange, he retweeted a picture of a domestic violence charge under the same name of a user railing against KC:D II’s inclusion of female characters that were “too strong” for the historical setting. He wasn’t afraid to put anyone trying to paint his game in a negative light on blast, and actively leveraged his platform and the community of the first game to silence what he rightly saw as pointless culture-war hogwash. He made it very clear that the game was “how he wanted it to be.”
Because the people who criticized the game did so almost purely to incite a reaction or try to tar the depiction of minority groups in KC:D II, and because the game has a large and supportive playerbase, Vávra is seen in a good light for his posts. But would his actions have been as righteous if he’d done the same to defend a game that promoted Nazism or genocide? What if someone developing a video game around the American Civil War refused to ignore objections to their portrayals of Black people, and lambasted those who spoke out on a highly public platform? Those actions wouldn’t be as defensible.
All of this ties into the idea of brand image, and how it’s mutating in the present online space. We’ve all seen the tweets from the Wendy’s account or from whoever’s in control at OperaGX; these are companies that have actively embraced internet culture, leeching off of the virality of what they can say and do online to drive up sales and interest. And reactions are exactly what a game publisher wants. The more fanfare there is online over their project, and as long as the discourse has at least some supporting voices (even better if they are outnumbered), the more a game appeals to people who want to buy it or support it in some other way. Even when masses of people watch a video essay about how a game is bad, this only serves to teach media algorithms that those videos are popular. They are then disseminated online in bigger and bigger waves of reach, ensuring that at least someone watching will make a purchase.
Whether or not Vávra’s daring attacks on his detractors are a valid strategy for publishers wanting to forge an ironclad image will only be proven by time. Markets are ever-changing, and the internet is perhaps the fastest-evolving territory in the world for companies looking to sell more and more to an online population that increases every single day. Warhorse has delivered a wonderful game that provides a richly detailed and lovingly crafted world, but the real-life journey of KC:D II’s brand is just as intriguing and complex as the history portrayed.
Source for twitter: https://x.com/danielvavra
