In the past few weeks, the problem of sexual harassment in the games industry has entered public conversation once again, provoking serious questions about the underlying culture enabling this sort of behaviour. While vital, the discussions involved in the Me Too movement can often be painful for those who have experienced sexual abuse or harassment by re-surfacing memories of past trauma. And now, someone in the modding community has identified this as a problem within games themselves – and has created a mod to help sexual abuse survivors enjoy Bethesda’s 2002 fantasy RPG Morrowind.
Made by US-based modder JaceyS, Sexual Harassment Remover is a Morrowind mod that seeks to “remove and replace several instances of sexual harassment aimed at the player-character”. As explained in the description, the mod changes multiple voice lines threatening acts of sexual violence against the player, re-names inappropriate items, and generally tones down some of the language. As an example, the Scroll of Manarape has been renamed to the Scroll of Manaleech, while Crassius Curio no longer asks the player to strip for him in return for sponsorship, instead handing the player a copy of his erotic play and asking for an opinion. The Dremora Anhaedra no longer threatens a sexualised form of violence against the player’s corpse, should you decide to taunt him.
“I got the first inkling of this mod from a Discord conversation about how Morrowind would be received if it were released today,” JaceyS explained to me. “Some thought that the slavery depicted in the game would not fly, but I consider the game’s handling of that subject to be fairly good. What would cause outrage, I thought, was Crassius Curio, a character infamous for his sexual harassment of the player character, regardless of gender.”