1348 Ex Voto, the third-person action-adventure game developed by Sedleo and published by Dear Villagers, was released earlier this week on March 12, and it’s garnered a justifiably low Metacritic score of 54 and an unjustifiably ridiculous user score of 1.1. This disparity is likely due to a recent anti-woke crusade over 1348 Ex Voto containing lesbian romance. Instead of shrugging and moving on because the game is bad, some people are using it to fuel fresh conspiracies.
Searching for a smoking gun, it was recently “discovered” that 1348 Ex Voto received roughly €656,131 in government tax credits and grants from 2021 to 2024, via the Italian Ministry of Culture’s Video Games Tax Relief scheme. “Turns out Ex Voto 1348 was funded through the Italian grants system, so Italian taxpayers funded propaganda,” news aggregation account Pirat_Nation stated on X.
1348 Ex Voto is an action-sim set in 14th-century medieval Italy, which may lead you to assume that the “propaganda” in question is the Italian government giving a game tax breaks to brainwash the populace into thinking Italian history is cool. Nope, it’s the fact that lesbian romance exists in the game, which upset the anti-woke chuds online who have been desperately searching for something new to whine about now that Highguard has shut down.
Their argument seems to be that gay people apparently didn’t exist prior to the release of George Michael’s 1998 hit Outside, making this another example of “forced DEI” in games. What makes the conspiracy especially absurd is that 1348 Ex Voto is actually pretty light on the LGBTQ+ representation. According to PCGamesN’s Nat Smith, you “never see so much as a tender brush of hands” throughout the course of the story.
There’s also no evidence that the tax relief money the studio received had anything to do with the content of the game. Here’s a look at the requirements a game must meet in order to qualify for the Video Games Tax Relief scheme, as outlined in the official documentation. There’s a handy little table that explains exactly how a game can be labelled “Culturally Valuable,” and therefore qualify.
A game has to earn 70 out of 100 points, which can be earned in a number of ways. If it’s based on a European work of “historical, artistic, literary, audiovisual, or scientific heritage,” you get 15 points. If it features any European “historical, legendary, social, artistic, cultural, sporting, or scientific themes,” you get another 15 points. If it’s original or “individually creative,” you get another 15 points. You even get 5 points if it’s in two European languages, as long as one of them is Italian.
I’ve read through this a few times, just to make sure, and I didn’t see a section that says “if a woman kisses a woman at some point, which the Italian government thinks is super cool by the way, we’ll automatically fund your game.” I did see a lot of vague, easy-to-fulfill criteria, however, which implies that the Italian government is pretty chill about which video game studios it gives out tax grants to.
But hey, if you need some further examples, Nacon Studio Milan’s TT Isle of Man: Ride on the Edge 3 received a €306,352 tax relief grant in 2023. Ah, yes, the famously Italian Isle of Man, located between Ireland and Britain. Ubisoft Studios SRL’s Star Wars Outlaws was granted €463,045 in tax relief in 2024. Technically, Earth is in space, where Star Wars Outlaws is set, and Italy is on Earth, so maybe that counts.
Oh, and in 2022, Trinity Team’s Bud Spencer & Terence Hill – Slaps and Beans 2 was awarded €52,179 in tax relief. Come on, man. What form of propaganda is the Italian government trying to push with a game called Slaps and Beans 2? Do Bud and Terence kiss in Slaps and Beans 2?! Ah heck, I just watched a longplay to make sure, and they didn’t kiss a single time.
So if the Italian government isn’t trying to push the gay agenda with 1348 Ex Voto, why did they award the developers €656,131 (roughly $752,000) in government tax credits and grants? Because the Italian government wants video game studios to make video games in Italy. Because video game studios create jobs. Jobs with wages, which can be taxed. So if more people move to Italy to make games and more Italian video game studios start popping up, the Italian government will make more money.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: the chuds are just attempting to outrage farm, and I’m just feeding them with the attention that their emotionally distant fathers never provided them with. But the sad thing is, lots of people have clearly fallen for this. I know X is a cesspit of disinformation and hatred at the best of times. Still, this poorly researched propaganda witch hunt is already spreading to other corners of the internet despite being completely baseless on multiple counts.
As development costs rise and more developers are made redundant in favor of cutting down production costs in favor of AI-generated slop, video game tax relief schemes have never been more important than they are now. According to the Steam reviews for 1348 Ex Voto, there are plenty of normal reasons not to give it a shot. The latest anti-woke YouTuber rage-bait isn’t one of them.
