KCD2 Director Slams Woke Games While Touting His Own Gay Rom

"I absolutely stand by the fact that the way we did it is exactly how something like this should be done. Non-coercively, naturally, and educationally." That's Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 creative director Daniel Vávra, celebrating his game's two nominations at this year's Gayming Awards. In the same breath, he calls other games' LGBTQ+ representation forced "woke" nonsense. The contradiction is so clean you could frame it.

Vávra wrote in a lengthy post on X on April 16, 2026 that he was "really proud" of KCD2's nominations for Fan Favourite and Best LGBTQ+ Character (for companion Sir Hans Capon) at the Gayming Awards. He went on to credit himself specifically for the inclusion of the Henry/Hans romance: "It was my idea, my decision and my responsibility and I had to convince others to do it." He then pivoted to attacking unnamed games for "shoving it down anyone's throat or trying to re-educate them like so many titles that are rightfully called 'woke' these days."

I cannot figure out what Vávra thinks the distinction is. Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 includes an optional gay romance. Baldur's Gate 3 includes optional gay romances. Dragon Age: The Veilguard includes optional gay romances. The mechanic is identical: the player chooses whether to pursue it. Vávra's argument seems to be that his version is "educational" because it depicts how things "really were in the Middle Ages," while everyone else's is coercive. But KCD2's romance is optional in exactly the same way those other games' romances are optional. Nobody is being forced to kiss Hans Capon. Nobody was forced to kiss Astarion, either.

The Face-Eating Leopard

This is a man with a long history on this front. Vávra was a vocal participant in GamerGate, has tweeted about the "horrors of inclusiveness" in gaming, and styled himself as #based for years. The original Kingdom Come: Deliverance became a flashpoint in 2018 over its refusal to include people of colour in any significant roles, framed as historical accuracy. So when KCD2 shipped with a gay romance as a major storyline, his own audience turned on him. As one commenter put it, invoking the famous "leopards eating faces party" meme, Vávra built a fanbase on anti-progressive and is now surprised that fanbase doesn't want progressive content.

To his credit, Vávra did push back against that backlash. When anti-woke voices attacked KCD2 for including the Hans romance, he defended the decision and argued that RPGs are about player choice. He was right then. But the post on X this week undermines that entirely, because he can't simply accept the nomination without also insisting that every other studio doing the same thing is doing it wrong. He closed by saying: "None of that means, that I personally don't find the abundance of forced 'woke' nonsense in the entertainment industry annoying at the same time."

He's been having a mini-argument in the replies with seemingly everyone, including someone impersonating Tony Soprano who accused Embracer Group of pressuring Warhorse into including the romance. Vávra denied it, reiterating that it was his idea. Which loops back to the central absurdity: he personally pushed his team to include a gay romance, celebrated awards recognition for it, and then used the same post to attack other developers for including gay romances. The only difference he can articulate is that his game does it "educationally" and theirs do it to "re-educate." I have read that sentence four times and I still don't know what it means.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is nominated alongside other titles at the Gayming Awards, with Hans Capon up for Best LGBTQ+ Character. Vávra previously defended the romance against his own fanbase's backlash, having stood up to the bullying tactics of the anti-woke crowd when the game launched. Rock Paper Shotgun noted that the people who actually deserve congratulations for these nominations are the writers and actors at Warhorse who built the Henry/Hans relationship, and I'm inclined to agree.