Recently, besides the explosively popular *Phantom Blade Zero*, if you are fond of indie games, another title released concurrently is definitely not to be missed in terms of both quality and discussion volume—that's right, it's *Deep Space Pawnshop: Probably Stolen*.
This name, which sounds like machine translation, might give a poor first impression—but in reality, *Deep Space Pawnshop: Probably Stolen* is now one of the hottest indie games on Steam. Players need to manage a shop in a dystopian space station, earning profits through buying low and selling high, hydroponic farming, raising fish and rats, appraising goods, and more. Besides honestly making money, players can also engage in illegal activities such as selling human flesh and organs or smuggling contraband.
During the Demo period, *Deep Space Pawnshop: Probably Stolen* accumulated a significant player base in the gaming community thanks to its excellent gameplay. After its official release on October 28, sales quickly surpassed one million, and the peak concurrent player count reached 180,000, making it both critically acclaimed and commercially successful.
Data Source: SteamDB
Yet, this highly acclaimed indie game has recently received a large number of negative reviews from domestic players, causing its approval rating in the Chinese region to drop to "Mixed."
The cause of this incident is familiar to us; it is precisely the gender issue that has triggered multiple public opinion crises in the gaming circle before—
Around the time of the game's release, several players from Xiaohongshu provided feedback that some text descriptions in the game were biased, affecting their gaming experience.
First, there was the introductory text for the item "Kitchen Knife": A stainless steel knife. Keep out of reach of children and upstairs housewives with ulterior motives.
Many players stated that using "upstairs housewives with ulterior motives" specifically reinforced gender stereotypes, noting that this narrative carried obvious discriminatory tones and could cause discomfort among female players.
Correcting the error in the post, the English text also contains this description
Second, the terms used by NPC characters to address the protagonist showed obvious gender bias.
Players who provided feedback stated that the neutral term "Dude" used by NPC "Officer Ren" to address the protagonist in the Chinese version was mistranslated with hidden agendas as "brother," effectively assuming the player-controlled shopkeeper was male, ignoring female players, and genuinely affecting their immersion during gameplay.
Therefore, these players reported the above issues to the production team of *Deep Space Pawnshop: Probably Stolen* via Discord and the feedback channel left by the officials on Xiaohongshu, requesting modifications.
In response to this textual controversy, the officials of *Deep Space Pawnshop: Probably Stolen* appeared quite receptive—in the November 7 update, the development team changed the kitchen knife's description from "upstairs housewives with ulterior motives" to "people with ulterior motives."
As for why the content regarding "brother" was not mentioned here, consider it a foreshadowing, which will be discussed later.
However, not everyone liked this part of the text change—another group of domestic players discovered that various translation issues previously raised by the community were not corrected in this update, while trivial content like the "Kitchen Knife" description was quickly modified. Some even tried providing feedback in the official QQ group but were kicked out after mentioning topics related to the "Kitchen Knife."
Thus, on the evening of November 8, Heybox, a community with many *Deep Space Pawnshop: Probably Stolen* players, became a breeding ground for this controversy, with大量 players actively posting discussions and leaving negative reviews on the Steam store page.
The community largely opposed the modification of the "Kitchen Knife" description text (many players later expressed the same opinion on Xiaohongshu). The primary reason for opposition was undoubtedly the perception that "the development team was deliberately catering to female players and appeasing public opinion related to gender issues."
As everyone knows, controversies triggered by "political correctness" have been common in the Chinese gaming circle in recent years. Due to space constraints, we won't elaborate with specific examples here. Regarding the text change for the "Kitchen Knife," many players believed that the officials of *Deep Space Pawnshop: Probably Stolen* were repeating past mistakes. What made them even more dissatisfied was that Heybox, as a core community gathering many players of the game, did not have an official feedback channel set up by the developers, who instead prioritized opinions from Xiaohongshu.
Furthermore, setting aside the lag in political correctness within the Chinese gaming circle compared to international servers, many players genuinely believed that there was nothing wrong with the original description of the "Kitchen Knife," and changing it was somewhat baffling.
During community discussions, some players mentioned that the reason the "Kitchen Knife" description specifically mentioned "housewives" and "children" was because it was referencing the item "Mom's Knife" from *The Binding of Isaac*, not due to gender stereotypes.
As for the specific source of the reference theory, some claimed all reference elements matched, others said the development team had admitted it themselves, and yet others noted that the knife's name in previous versions was related to *The Binding of Isaac*. However, the latter two definitive claims are currently difficult to verify.
Some players also felt that in the dystopia of *Deep Space Pawnshop: Probably Stolen*, where bureaucratic corruption and gang violence run rampant, and people in the lower districts live like animals, players can commit all sorts of evils in the game—not only selling human flesh and organs but also reselling military arms privately stolen and sold by government officials to revolutionaries. This worldview has equally trampled on all public order and good customs. In their view, nitpicking the description of the "Kitchen Knife" in the worldview of *Deep Space Pawnshop: Probably Stolen* is quite bizarre, akin to asking if a killer's eyes are dry after committing murder.
Incidentally, although perhaps not intentional by the author, *Deep Space Pawnshop: Probably Stolen* is quite liberal and unrestrained regarding gender—due to random combinations of character images and events, phenomena such as male pregnancy and even more outrageous scenarios can occur in the game...
Additionally, these players believed that even if the "Kitchen Knife" description text contained certain gender elements, it was completely reasonable and consistent within the context of *Deep Space Pawnshop: Probably Stolen*. Modifying it for the sake of external political correctness equated to breaking the game's worldview and affecting the immersion of players who cared about such details.
Some even went as far as starting a magical duel—arguing that if one were to be as serious about it as with the "Kitchen Knife," many contents in *Deep Space Pawnshop: Probably Stolen* also show significant bias against men.
For example, why are eight out of the nine people on the wanted list male? Is the game discriminating against men? Why is the only female wanted criminal, "Lu," good-looking, has a relatively positive character setting, and carries the highest bounty? And why are there major villains like "The Butcher" among the male wanted criminals? Is this also because the game discriminates against men?
When the relevant public opinion began to ferment on a large scale, the officials of *Deep Space Pawnshop: Probably Stolen* quickly took countermeasures—in the hotfix patch on November 9, the officials rolled back the game version and explained the reason for the "Kitchen Knife" text change in the update announcement. Simply put, the game author Amba saw relevant feedback from Chinese players on Discord, and without communicating with the domestic publishing team, directly listed it as an item to be modified.
However, after the officials quickly took measures, many players who had developed PTSD regarding gender issues did not accept it.
They believed that reverting the changes was merely an expedient measure by the officials under pressure from negative reviews. If *Deep Space Pawnshop: Probably Stolen* truly respected the domestic player community ecosystem, it should have established an official feedback channel on Heybox from the beginning, rather than only listening to opinions from Discord and Xiaohongshu communities.
On the other hand, rolling back the version indirectly caused many MODs to fail, affecting many players who hadn't even been paying attention to the community controversy. Consequently, ordinary players who were previously uninvolved or unaware of the turmoil learned about it for the first time and flocked to the community to vent their dissatisfaction, further lowering the reputation of *Deep Space Pawnshop: Probably Stolen* in the Chinese region.
Finally, on November 10, Amba personally registered an account on Heybox and published an apology letter to Chinese players. In the letter, Amba openly admitted his mistakes and formally responded to several issues of concern within the community.
First, regarding the "brother" address used by "Officer Ren" towards the player, Amba stated that Officer Ren never called the shopkeeper "brother," nor did the game's Chinese text ever use "brother" to address the player. The circulating screenshots were believed to be from a MOD, and the officials made no changes.
In fact, before Amba came to Heybox to post an apology letter, a group of players had already started investigating the accusation that "Dude" was mistranslated as "brother" with hidden agendas. Here, we directly present the conclusions from the player community's investigation—
By crawling data from multiple versions of the game, some discovered that NPCs never referred to the player as "brother." Moreover, the word "Dude" in NPC "Officer Ren's" lines was translated as "buddy" in the official Simplified Chinese version, which has no clear gender bias. Therefore, the accusation of "translation with hidden agendas" can be considered baseless.
So why did players provide relevant feedback in the first place?
During the player community's investigation, two relatively reliable theories were proposed.
The first theory is that during the game's Demo period, a fan translation translated the word "Dude" in the lines of the NPC "Addict Scavenger" as "brother," leading some players to mistakenly attribute this line to "Officer Ren."
The second theory is that in a certain otome-oriented MOD, "Officer Ren" did indeed call the player "good brother." Therefore, the players who provided feedback might have been playing after installing this MOD, but since they were unaware that the MOD had changed the forms of address, a misunderstanding arose.
Regarding the reason for the "Kitchen Knife" description text change, Amba revealed more details—the Chinese operations team had warned Amba not to make the change due to the risk of public backlash, and Amba agreed. However, due to excessive workload, Amba forgot to revert the "Kitchen Knife" change... It was simply a mix-up.
As for the issue of corrupted saves due to MOD failures, it was not caused by the version rollback—the official team upgraded the API to prevent malicious poisoning within MODs. As long as MOD authors adapt to the update, the original MODs will work normally. This means that even without the "Kitchen Knife" text change, MOD failures would likely have occurred anyway.
Additionally, Amba emphasized that the development team of *Deep Space Pawnshop: Probably Stolen* does not participate in any political activities, taking full responsibility for the incident. Amba stated that previous actions were purely due to negligence, not a deliberate attempt to cater to a minority player group by altering game content.
It can only be said that foreigners accustomed to the new version indeed find it difficult to adapt when entering the Chinese server environment.
After Amba personally stepped in to apologize, many players were moved by Amba's sincerity and changed their previous negative reviews back to positive ones. The turmoil caused by the "Kitchen Knife" text change incident thus began to slowly subside.
Looking back now, *Deep Space Pawnshop: Probably Stolen* only adjusted a few bytes of text from start to finish, a detail so minor it would likely go unnoticed in update logs. However, this tiny change sparked a huge uproar in the Chinese player community, evolving into a days-long public opinion battle. Onlookers who arrived late to witness the whole story felt a sense of absurdity, thinking, "All this fuss over such a small thing?"
From this, it can also be seen that with continuous fermentation in recent years, the sensitivity of the "gender opposition" topic in the Chinese internet environment has been pulled to its extreme. Even an unintentional statement in game text can be rapidly amplified and over-interpreted, evolving into a hostile shouting match between two player groups. Originally simple content feedback gradually deviated from the original intention of "optimizing the gaming experience" and turned into a stance dispute wrapped in emotion.
During this process, the most emotional content always spread the fastest—for example, Amba and the official QQ group had debunked rumors regarding the "Kitchen Knife" text change and MOD failure issues; the authenticity of the "brother" address had also been investigated by players earlier.
However, these responses backed by clear factual evidence spread much slower and had less influence in the public opinion sphere than simple and crude labels like "misogynistic" or "misandrist." Many players who entered the fray with emotions from the start were unable to grasp or verify the truth of the event, participating in an escalating war based solely on hearsay and fragmented information. Even now, after Amba has apologized, many continue their verbal attacks.
However, nowadays, more and more players are gradually growing tired of the escalating gender wars, actively resisting emotional confrontation, and focusing on enjoying the game itself.
*Deep Space Pawnshop* is really fun, and I recommend everyone to play it. There's no need to miss such a good game due to external factors. After the official release, I personally played it frantically for 50 hours during breaks from playing *Phantom Blade Zero*—if you have time, why not try raising a super thunderous giant rat yourself?
