Trans Awareness Week and Forum Moderation

On the occasion of Transgender Awareness Week, we at Paizo want to reaffirm our support for our transgender colleagues, creators, and community members. We recognize that we've not always been there for our trans community members. While things are rough now, we as a company are dedicated to improving and providing a safe space for all gamers—especially trans gamers—to play, create, and be part of a thriving community where they are not only welcomed but celebrated.

We felt that this year, we shouldn’t place additional emotional labor upon our trans staff, creators, and community to contribute to a blog for Trangender Awareness Week. Rather, we wanted to address the issue of transphobia on our forums.

Many members of the community have noted a high amount of homophobic and transphobic posts recently. Let us be clear: these hateful posts are not okay under any circumstances, and those who make them will be faced with permanent suspension from the forums. Though our customer service department is doing their best to keep watch and address moderation flags, it’s clear that the volume of moderation needed on the forums in the last few months has meant that the team sometimes takes more time than usual to moderate a thread.

Transphobia is serious and removing it from the forums should take precedence over other more routine moderation tasks. Therefore, if you need to report transphobia on the forums, please don’t hesitate to contact customer service directly by email at customer.service@paizo.com with INTOLERANCE in the subject line. Any such hate will be dealt with swiftly and incur a permanent suspension.

While we realize that combatting discrimination is an ongoing process and this is only a small step, we hope that it can begin to make our community forums a place where all members of our community feel welcome, and more importantly, safe.

Thank you to our trans community members and other allies who have pushed us to be better recently. We hear you, we value you, and we will continue to improve ourselves, our games, and our community to earn back the trust we’ve lost. It’s hard to admit that we haven’t been living up to our values, but it’s the right thing to do, and we can’t move forward without doing so.

Please also consider donating to nonprofits benefiting and supporting the trans community—members of our staff recommend TGI Justice Project and Ingersoll Gender Center, though there are many great organizations doing the work that would value your contribution.