Honestly, I thought I had discovered the weirdest game mod of all time yesterday when I came across the Hawk Tuah Girl in Super Mario 64, but I’ve stumbled upon some news for you today that registers 100 on the madness scale. In fact, it’s so odd that Bethesda has stepped in to remove it from their mod listings entirely.
We live in a world where DOOM is put on everything and every character seems to have been modded into it. Just take a look at this Mushroom Kingdom-esque mod and experience what it would be like to have Mazza pumping Goombas and Koopas full of lead. Still, it seems that characters aren’t enough for the modding community, with actual humans making their way into the game to be, in this case, destroyed by players.
If you’re into playing mods of DOOM, then you’ll probably know all about Thatcher’s Techbase. It’s not a new mod by any stretch of the imagination, but according to PC Gamer, it was being distributed to fans through the new Definitive Bundle of Doom 1 & 2, and people have been complaining that the content is a little too-close-to-home, while others that it’s simply just downright disrespectful.
For those of you who have ever learned anything about British Politics, then you should know about Margaret Thatcher. She was the Prime Minister of England for twenty-one years from 1979-1990 and the country’s first female Prime Minister. While she was in office for over two decades, she didn’t exactly garner a lot of positive praise for some of her actions, with many citing her influences as having a negative impact on manufacturing and industry, as well as taking milk from school children. There was a website for a long time that simply told you whether she was alive or not – as I implied above, some people really didn’t like her.
The Thatcher’s Techbase mod is based in The Tenth Circle of Hell, which just so happens to be the UK. The recent definitive bundle has meant that console players have had access to the mod which for the first time, as you might imagine, has opened up the number of people who knew about the mod and caused a bit of an uproar at the same time.
Creator Jim Purvis recently took to Twitter to share the news the game had been banned. I suppose a world where you can use the Trident Launcher nuclear deterrent and destroy respawning Tories might appeal to some of the country’s voters, but no matter how you look at this game, it’s Anti-Thatcher and certainly not a mod that Bethesda can allow to stay no matter their political leaning.
As soon as politics and gaming mix, things start to get a little tetchy. Gaming for me is like Switzerland, and when I sit down to game, I want to leave politics at the door. While the mod has been removed from the official DOOM mod listings, you can still check out the mod from the official download page if you’re interested in learning more about the production of this Margaret Thatcher-inspired DOOM mod and the team behind it, however, as well as checking out the launch trailer video!
