**GOG apologizes after accidentally emailing Nazi SS symbols to players!** So back in June 2026 (June 5th to be exact), Steam's competitor shot off a newsletter promoting *The End of the Sun*βa beautiful fantasy title set against Slavic mythology and cultureβand somehow managed to include actual double-S runes that looked like they'd wandered straight out of Nazi Germany! What makes this story absolutely wild is that GOG had multiple overlapping reasons for this chaos: miscommunication with their German QA team, weird font rendering issues across different devices (especially on mobile phones where the rune SowilΕβwhich actually means "sun" and perfectly fits the game's titleβgets rendered as Ο), understaffing during a bank holiday when people were probably already tired of working, plus what they're calling just a general series of mistakes.
Here's my favorite part: one of GOG's verified reps on Reddit confirmed that they'd actually noticed this before distribution out of respect for local German sensitivities and blocked it from going to the Germany community specificallyβbut why was it sent everywhere else? The developers were equally baffled, posting in a thread "We don't know why GOG used symbols in their newsletter. Really, we were also totally surprised when we saw the logo in the newsletter (the old logo) and the symbols next to the newsletter title." It's one of those stories that makes me love gaming communitiesβthe whole thing spawned genuine confusion between developers and platform holders rather than just a standard "oops" from corporate PR!
I think this is actually kind of charming when you step backβSlavic runes doubling up on mobile devices during understaffing in Germany? That tells a story I can almost picture, with tired people at different ends of the continent somehow producing an SS-adjacent symbol for their global newsletter. GOG's response has been good about owning it and explaining the multiple factors involved rather than just blaming one thing. If you want to dive deeper into this, check out The Verge where Terrence O'Brien broke down every piece [Verge story](https://www.theverge.com/games/945088/gog-apologizes-email-nazi-symbols-the-end-of-the-sun) and the Reddit thread with GOG's own rep. Honestly? Better than I expected for what started as a small gaffeβthis was handled like a story, not just an apology tweet!
Source: https://www.theverge.com/games/945088/gog-apologizes-email-nazi-symbols-the-end-of-the-sun
Also see: Reddit discussion thread with GOG rep confirmation
Here's my favorite part: one of GOG's verified reps on Reddit confirmed that they'd actually noticed this before distribution out of respect for local German sensitivities and blocked it from going to the Germany community specificallyβbut why was it sent everywhere else? The developers were equally baffled, posting in a thread "We don't know why GOG used symbols in their newsletter. Really, we were also totally surprised when we saw the logo in the newsletter (the old logo) and the symbols next to the newsletter title." It's one of those stories that makes me love gaming communitiesβthe whole thing spawned genuine confusion between developers and platform holders rather than just a standard "oops" from corporate PR!
I think this is actually kind of charming when you step backβSlavic runes doubling up on mobile devices during understaffing in Germany? That tells a story I can almost picture, with tired people at different ends of the continent somehow producing an SS-adjacent symbol for their global newsletter. GOG's response has been good about owning it and explaining the multiple factors involved rather than just blaming one thing. If you want to dive deeper into this, check out The Verge where Terrence O'Brien broke down every piece [Verge story](https://www.theverge.com/games/945088/gog-apologizes-email-nazi-symbols-the-end-of-the-sun) and the Reddit thread with GOG's own rep. Honestly? Better than I expected for what started as a small gaffeβthis was handled like a story, not just an apology tweet!
Source: https://www.theverge.com/games/945088/gog-apologizes-email-nazi-symbols-the-end-of-the-sun
Also see: Reddit discussion thread with GOG rep confirmation