A board game forum rejected ads for “Possess Me, Satan” over fears of demonic oppression

BoardGameGeek fired an advertising manager after he rejected ads for a Satan-themed game due to his Christian beliefs

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An advertisement for a new board game with a Satanic theme was rejected by one of the largest board game forums in the world because it might trigger people “suffering from demonic oppression.”

Possess Me, Satan is a “Mafia”-like deduction game from the company Falling Whale Games where players have to figure out who’s secretly Satan and who got possessed. Perform an exorcism on the wrong person, though, and “they will die.” Fun! Along the way, other players may serve as chaos agents and investigators, making it more difficult to figure out who’s in control and who’s being controlled.

Within just a few hours of launching on the crowdfunding website Gamefound on Tuesday, the $10,000 goal was reached—with 30 days left to spare. But before that happened, the creators attempted to purchase advertising on the popular website BoardGameGeek, where potential supporters could learn more about it.

Falling Whale Games confirmed to me that these were among the ads they submitted for approval:

They didn’t get a response at first, which was unusual given the two groups’ working history, so they followed up over a week later to see if there was any problem.

This time they heard back from the site’s Advertising Manager… who told them he personally rejected the ads because they offended his religious sensibilities.

… To be completely transparent, I've been sitting on this one and praying about what to do in this instance. As a follower of Jesus, I routinely help people suffering from demonic oppression, and more occasionally, possession, and it's absolutely devastating the damage he does to peoples' lives. It's sometimes beyond what would even dare be depicted in a horror film. The amazing thing is that I get to see Jesus completely heal folks of even the most severe effects (we've walked with one lady who was diagnosed with 32 distinct personalities as a result of horrific occultic abuse, and she eventually was one whole, complete individual, healed by Jesus, with no fragments or need of all her psychological meds), but it doesn't change the terrible reality behind the theme that this game is depicting.

So, I just can't in good conscience approve this one; given what l've seen firsthand, the thought of displaying this subject matter makes me sick to my stomach. I don't begrudge you personally, as many people just plain don't understand the reality of it, but I'd strongly urge you to consider these things. IMO, the responsible thing to do would be to pull the entire project, as there are *way* more people that suffer this than you could possibly imagine, putting on a good face (usually enabled by dissociation), but suffering terribly behind the scenes.

I know this response was more than you bargained for, but I wanted to be 100% honest about where I'm coming from, rather than just ignoring the request.
Even though you may not be on the same page, I appreciate your understanding.

Uhhh… what the hell is that all about?

Let’s set aside the person’s Satanic Panic delusions for a moment. Why is this person’s religious beliefs interfering with a pretty standard business transaction on behalf of an ostensibly secular company? (It may be a private business but it’s still an insane thing for a representative to say.) And have you seen other games?! One of the most popular in recent memory involves exploding kittens, but that’s not an endorsement of animal cruelty.

This is a game. It’s fictional. It’s fun. It’s not promoting Satan any more than The Satanic Temple. The rejection was based on a complete misunderstanding of everything.

Falling Whale Games responded with some predictable shock (and, I might add, remarkable calm):

Thank you for getting back to us.

It's very disappointing to hear you are denying us service based on religion. Is this the decision of Board Game Geek as a company or of just you personally?

Is there an advertising policy rule we are breaking?

There is currently ads on Board Game Geek for a game called "All True Believers" which is themed to the occult so it seems strange that our game is being singled out.

We are definitely not going to pull the project due to individual people not liking the theme. It is simply not for those people.

The response this time was even more infuriating because the Advertising Manager compared their theme to one featuring a “sexual predator” in that it’s not “friendly” and it would be “extremely triggering.”

Keep in mind it's not over religion, but reality. It's the same reason I would say a game would be in very poor taste if it featured being a sexual predator, or something that would directly trigger someone that's been harmed by the subject matter. It's about keeping BGG welcoming to everyone, and since I'm privy to this subject matter, I know firsthand that this is not friendly content, and incredibly triggering, put in front of some of the population that visits BGG.

Similar to site moderation, there are of course judgement calls to be made when it comes to displaying ads on the site. If it were just my personal preference, "All True Believers" wouldn't be approved either, but I have to factor in if something being displayed is going to be overtly triggering. In that game, it's a bit less obvious from the title, whereas you went for the shock value. Of course, that's a business decision on your part, but it also means it's not responsible of me to put it in front of a diverse community of gamers.

On Reddit, where Falling Whale Games posted screenshots from this exchange, an administrator of the BoardGameGeek forum chimed in to say the representative shouldn’t have said those things… but didn’t admit the decision was wrong or that it would be reversed.

Our Advertising Manager should not have presented his personal beliefs as representing the company. We are making sure he understands that this was an inappropriate and unprofessional response.

Yes, it was inappropriate. Yes, it was unprofessional. But what are you doing about it?! I don’t even care if the person is fired; I just want to know that this will never happen again.

When someone asked similar questions, the same admin insisted the issue was the religious nature of the reply and not the rejection of the ads.

The ads in question would not have been approved regardless. This info comes from a different member of the team who reviewed the ads in question after we became aware of this situation.

As far as I can tell this was a one-off incident. If any other advertisers feel like they may have been affected then I encourage them to email [us] so we can review those cases.

Why wouldn’t the ads have been approved? No one seemed to know. But that response from the admin was soon deleted.

On BoardGameGeek’s own forums, however, OctavianX added that the issue was that they try to avoid ads that are “edgy or provocative.” But you can see the ads for yourself near the top of this post. They’re hardly provocative. The same could be said about the name of the game. It’s pretty damn straightforward, and the game mechanics themselves are family-friendly. You have to wonder if an ad for a game celebrating LGBTQ people would also be rejected just because of the subject matter.

It wasn’t hard for people to find the Advertising Manager’s social media pages—I’m purposely not sharing them here—where his past posts promoted the idea that gay people could turn straight and that homosexuality is caused by “childhood trauma” and “generational curses.” He’s also said transgender people can’t be helped because “you can’t counsel a demon,” but they can be fixed by finding Jesus. Somehow.

This was no longer just about some rejected ads. This was rapidly becoming a bigger question of whether board game enthusiasts even wanted to support a website specifically meant for them. Several commenters online said they were canceling their paid memberships to BoardGameGeek.

Beyond that, though, everyone with a vested interest in this community just wanted to know what the site’s policies were.

Was it secretly a pro-Christian gaming forum?

What were the rules about advertising?

Would customers have a way of appealing bad decisions?

And how was management going to handle this incident?

Late last night, they got an answer to that last question. The company announced that the Advertising Manager had been fired:

Due to a situation in which BGG's Advertising Manager responded inappropriately in a business email to a designer, I have decided to let him go. His response does not reflect or represent our company or the way we conduct business.

That’s the right move. But as of this writing, we still haven’t heard if those original ads would be accepted. Falling Whale Games told me they “haven’t decided yet if we want to use their services again.” If BoardGameGeek reaches out to them, perhaps they’ll reconsider, but given the success of their crowdfunding, they appear to be doing just fine without the support of the forum itself.

However this plays out, it’s a reminder of what happens when people with religious delusions are placed in positions where their beliefs aren’t supposed to be front and center. They’re often incapable of making rational decisions. In this case, the person perceived an enjoyable party game about Satan as equivalent to genuine human trauma and decided to put up a barrier between the designers and his company’s members.

We don’t know how many other game designers had similar experiences because of this one person’s bigotry. But BoardGameGeek’s initial response only made the whole thing worse. Instead of immediately admitting the rejection itself was absurd, they tried to narrow the controversy to the tone of the email. As if everything would have been fine if the person just didn’t bring his religion into it. But the underlying problem still remains unresolved!

By firing that employee, they’ve stopped the bleeding, but the scar remains. A board game forum shouldn’t become a battlefield for culture-war paranoia. Hell, it’s always frustrating when your subculture gets invaded by people who don’t respect the creativity within it.

The only healthy response—and the one BoardGameGeek ought to take—is to reject that mentality outright and make clear that these shared spaces will not be controlled by the most easily offended fundamentalist in the room.

(Thanks to Annabel for the tip)

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