Last week, Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition received a new expansion titled Siege Of Dragonspear, and it’s not going down well with players – the downloadable content for the 1998 RPG has received a large number of negative user reviews.

While many players have posted about good experiences with the game, a large number of complaints have arisen, focused on a number of bugs with the expansion. Players have reportedly encountered repeated crashes, losses of equipment when importing characters as well as major multiplayer bugs. Other complaints have focused on the quality of voice acting and overall writing, and the game breaking old mods.

However, the major controversy relates to the inclusion of some minor lines of dialogue relating to a character’s status as transgender. Many negative user reviews complain about this supposed hijacking by a “social justice warrior,” with choice examples including the following:

“I haven’t played yet but from what I’ve been reading the devs are begging for positive reviews after they infuriated the community by trying to pander to the LGBT community.”

“Bad form on tossing in social politics into a beloved game of my youth!”

“The SJW’s have taken hold of Baldur’s Gate. You can’t even roleplay an evil character any more and claim to want to rip the flesh off of their transgender bones and eat their transgender intestines. You will be banned.”

We’ve not yet had a chance to play Siege Of Dragonspear so we can’t offer an opinion on the new content one way or another, but it’s clear that the expansion has provoked some strong reactions – and many of them seem to have come from a pretty nasty place. We’d hope that the majority of issues would be cleared up with some good patching work, and that the expansion can be judged on its own merits.