helps that the games are good
Half of reactionary gamer rage is misdirected anger at games becoming corporatized soulless microtransaction factories made by people who get laid off every year
100%. The DEI/CRT/Woke narrative is fascist, it's a way to blame the decay of Capitalism on minority groups, rather than Capitalism itself.
Yelling at the Oompah-Loompahs because my chocolate bar is substandard instead of yelling at the purple dude who owns the factory.
Also, in this case, yelling at the chocolate bar.
G*mers: this game has lackluster game play, a boring unoriginal story (if any), more bugs than an anthill, has clearly suffered from rushed development and crunch time, and is basically a half-assed excuse for the endless stream of microtransactions and cosmetics shoved in my face, why am I not having fun? It must be all the DEI feeeemales and minorities!
Yeah, I remember the discourse around her coming up as a topic on ye olde G4 channel back in the day.
One need only look at the HL2 'HD model replacers' to see what vaguely chuddy gamers think of Alyx. (Or better yet, uh... don't look at those)
Lol there’s a mod that makes Demoman white, but all it does it just make him look like a black albino person because it only changes the skin color and nothing else
At the time racists focused on white women dating black men and were hanging around neo-nazi circles irl. The fash to internet groyper screaming about black people on 4chan pipeline was still being set up.
Alyx was one of the few major female characters in games at the time that wasn't sexualized by the developer in some way. So then 
s went on to build "Cinematic Mod" for Half-Life 2 a year later, which among other things replaced Alyx's character model with a new "high definition" one that gave her big boobs, cleavage and an exposed midriff to make pp hard. 
Trying to find character model upgrade mods for Bethesda games that are not awooga brained 
Alyx was one of the few major female characters in games at the time that wasn't sexualized by the developer in some way
I mean she's not the worst example but she exists nigh-entirely to be a cool badass girl who has the hots for the mute player stand-in
The distaff counterpart to Barney.
He gives you your crowbar, she gives you your gravity gun. Both are attractive people who crack jokes and act familiar with you.
Diversity is more than just skin color and genitals. Notice their accents and body shapes and more.
•
Pyro aside (because Pyro's race/gender are intentionally left ambiguous), 7/8 are white, 7/8 are western, and 8/8 are male.
Going by that standard Heavy Weapons Guy aged into being more diverse as the russians got de-europified
I think tf2 usually gets ignored when it comes to this topic because it is sorta kinda satire, the characters aren't really intended to be self inserts or idealized empowered people, they are looney tunes caricatures with the gender expectations of the era being satirized baked right in
Not trying to say it's actually woke and diverse, just that people seem to care less about a lack of diversity when the characters are all characters instead of them being templates for expression
Well, like, there are probably rage grifters who weren't even born when HL2 and Portal 1 came out lol....
Chell is a silent protagonist and Alyx is a recurring character in a niche title most people couldn't play anyway.
I actually just started my first Alyx playthrough last week. It's fantastic
Best VR game I've ever played by far. 
Superhot is AWESOME. It makes you feel like you are Neo in the Matrix.
I’ve heard Elite Dangerous is sick also.
Fallout 4 VR is great too but the controls are a bit clunky when ported over.
Gorn is a lot of (violent) fun too.
Internet grifters were definitely around for Half Life: Alyx. However, I am shocked by how chuddy steam is without there being major reactions to them doing this. Especially with CS2 and Rust (valve adjacent FacePunch).