Peripheral maker Glorious PC Gaming Race, which makes the popular Model O gaming mouse, has decided to ditch the racial epithets that have long and unjustly found a home in PC gaming. From here on, the company will instead go by simply Glorious, which feels like a much more grown-up name for a serious company.
“The new branding better aligns Glorious’ public face with our current values as we continue to mature and enter new product categories,” the company says. “It is more inclusive, versatile and accessible to the rapidly-growing global community of Glorious fans.”
“…we also want to ensure the new audiences we’re now reaching can also feel a positive connection with our brand.”
It may take some time to shake the remnants of the Glorious PC Gaming Race, however. The company says that while an immediate rebranding should be complete within a few weeks, including a new webstore URL (the existing one is pcgamingrace.com), it will be a multi-year process to entirely make the switch.
PC gaming has long struggled with its use of racially-charged phrases, namely ‘master race’, which has connotations with the Nazi regime. For example, one of the busiest and largest PC gaming subreddits, with 6 million members, is named r/PCMasterRace. A subreddit that feels it important to firmly note that no gamer is actually superior to another in its ‘Why PC?’ guide, which feels entirely besides the point if it wasn’t for the poor choice in name.
As Tyler Wilde wrote back in 2015 in his call to put an end to the racial joke: “If you have to explain that your community isn’t about racial supremacy, then maybe you’ve chosen a poor name for your community.”
For the newly-named Glorious, it’s a simple and effective rebrand that’s wholly welcome. The new logo looks good and still harkens back to the original logo without the nasty racial epithet thrown in there. It feels like nothing has been lost for the change, seeing as the company was often referred to as ‘Glorious’ anyways, but does mean we won’t have to reference our dislike for the brand name in reviews anymore.
I also assume that employees of the company will feel much better when telling friends and family where they work without the awkward explanation of the master race meme; “it’s a joke from a decade-old YouTube video, right, about how PC gamers are racially superior to console gamers.” Yeah, okay, buddy.
“While we remain committed to serving PC gamers and not taking ourselves too seriously, we have also grown and matured significantly as a brand,” CEO and founder of Glorious, Shazim Mohammad, says.