Players within the Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn community held a gay pride parade in honor of Square Enix’s decision to allow same-sex marriages into the game.

Slate reported that members of the Rough Trade Gaming Community guild, an online LGBT gaming community, decided to hold an impromptu gay pride parade on the game’s Gilgamesh server to show support for Square Enix’s decision. The parade was organized by characters, each arranging themselves with different armour colors, and lining up next to each other to represent the gay pride symbol, a rainbow. The movement, called “Pixel Pride,” was also in memory of a guild member murdered in the April Calgary stabbings, Canadian RGTC gamer Lawrence Hong.

Final Fantasy XIV producer Naoki Yoshida explained the decision to introduce same-sex marriages into the MMO, “Why should there be restrictions on who pledges their love or friendship to each other? And so we decided to go this way.”

Square Enix, alongside the announcement of the new decision in social equality, announced  that Final Fantasy XIV will soon be offering a new class (Rogues) and job (Ninjas).

My Opinion:

I am really proud of the online gaming community right now. We’ve certainly come a long way over the years with same-sex equality within society, let alone the gaming community. While we’re not all the way there yet with acceptance and tolerance, courageous acts like this pride parade helps get us there every little bit of the way. Amazing, wonderful job members of the Rough Trade Gaming Community and all the players out there who actively support this decision by Square Enix!

_____________________________________________________________________

Audrey Lips is one of MONG’s associate writers and is currently balancing a Journalism major while secretly hoping to get her Hogwarts acceptance letter. You can follow her TMI posts on Twitter.