Chinese gamers threaten keyboard maker Cherry with boycott after storm over giveaway aimed at ‘men only’
- German company apologises and promises to investigate bad-tempered online exchanges with followers after promotion goes off the rails
A German company best known for keyboards popular with online gamers faces a boycott in China after it fired back with graphic language at social media users who complained about a giveaway aimed at male customers only.
On Saturday, Cherry’s China division offered to give four mechanical keyboards away to male gamers, without any mention of women who make up a sizeable part of the Chinese gaming community.
Followers on Weibo who asked if women had a chance of winning the prizes, were told: “Of course we will send [the prize to female winners], the prizes are not awarded according to gender at all.”
Later that day, Cherry China amended its giveaway offer to keyboards for men and make-up for women, but explaining that prizes awards would not be determined by a winner’s sex because the software that ran the offer did not distinguish between genders.
“Does a giveaway for male gamers mean that we think women are not suited for gaming?” Cherry China asked users on Weibo. “This kind of black-and-white thinking does not match a primary schooler’s reading comprehension ability. The giveaway platform does not even have a function that sorts users by gender.”