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This conversation feels like it’s going in circles. The same few people stating the same opinion over and over. No minds are going to change, no new ideas are going to be introduced; I strongly suggest moving on. The long and short of it is we didn’t want the performance in the game anymore, we had the power to change it, and we did. We also changed the old lighting that we didn’t want in the game anymore. We will be making sure the original release remains available for anyone who wants to play it.

It seems the people who think this is wrong are upset purely with hypothetical situations. Fun fact: Hattie McDaniel was the first black actress to win an Oscar in 1939 for Gone with the Wind. The second black actress to win an Oscar was Whoopi Goldberg... in 1990. People of colour didn't historically get cast in notable roles very often (and still struggle now). Hollywood has a long history of casting white actors to play people of colour. A long history. They'd just put them in dark makeup and that would do. Due to societal pressure they slowly stopped putting people in dark makeup... but they still cast those roles with white people. They just changed the ethnicity of the character instead. Not good. With voice acting, nothing changed for a long time because controversial makeup wasn't an issue. But today doing such things, even unintentionally, harkens back to this troubling history of consciously excluding people of colour. Refusing to acknowledge this fact is denying reality. It happened, for decades, and now it needs to be consciously addressed because it was wrong. Also refusing to acknowledge that Bosco is a black man is denying reality. It's like saying Homer Simpson isn't a white man because his skin colour is yellow. Trevor Noah summed up the issue perfectly.

Is it? I think it will take the industry to a very segregational place and that's not a good thing. The whole point of acting, specially voice acting, is that one can pretend to be someone else, fictional or not. And in regards to voice acting, how one look is even less of a factor. I don't know what criteria casting directors have when they choose one actor over another. It might be personal preference, it might be pure discrimination against a certain factor or trait, it might be perception of financial return, it myght be all of these or none of them. But it's dangerous and sets a bad precedent to generalize and run with assumptions for the entire industry in order to try to solve an apparent problem of equality of opportunity with equality of outcome. In this case though, they admitted that it was purely out of ethniticity, which only feeds the idea that (voice) actors should take roles where they share certain immutable traits. Personally, I'm not a fan of this decision, but it is what it is. The remaster does look great.

People demanding that minority characters being played by minority actors is absolutely not overreacting, though. The entertainment industry is heavily tilted against minorities. You absolutely can't achieve inclusivity and social change without progressive politics. That's the raison d'être for that whole movement. Speaking from experience, as an actor/voice actor myself, I know that there are tons of people of all ethnicities and backgrounds having seen them when I respond to casting calls, even in an area as small as mine. Casting minorities definitely is not limiting the pool, it's actually expanding the pool because these groups of people wouldn't even be considered under normal circumstances. That's actually the crux of the problem that this particular progressive movement is striving to address. The progress that's being made now won't shift back, the same way progressive politics didn't cause the entertainment industry to shift back to minstrel entertainment and blackface back during the 1950s-1970s US civil rights era. Looking back on that era from today, 40-70 years on, almost everyone would say it's extremely good that we don't hire white actors in black makeup to play black characters. The same thing will hold true 40-70 years from now, where people will agree that having white voice actors make voices that "sound" like African American, Asian American, Native American, etc. dialects is not a good thing, especially when there's a huge field of voice actors to choose from that actually belong to those groups. If the "purple character" you are referring to in Sam & Max is Bosco, then I think the important thing that you are missing in this is that he speaks with an African American dialect (not to mention the fact that Momma Bosco is very obviously African American herself). So, yes, if a "purple character" speaks in a dialect or accent of a specific ethnic group, or is said to be of that ethnic group, then that "purple character" should definitely be played by an actor that is actually from that specific ethnic group. As for changing actors for new remasters, that's up to the company (Skunkape chose to do so with the Sam & Max Save the World remaster, but they weren't compelled to by anyone other then themselves). However, if a company leaves things unchanged, they shouldn't be surprised when they're opened up to criticism or even limited sales because of it due to the product being released in today's market (as was the case in my Leisure Suit Larry Reloaded example above). Yes, but with more and more people flexing their wallet towards inclusivity (see the huge success of Black Panther, Black-ish, etc.), the tides are changing. As an example of progressive politics changing people's viewing habits to the benefit of minority actors, people used to love minstrel shows and blackface too (most of the early cinema included these and were runaway successes). But, with the progressive politics of the civil rights era, more and more people (and not just minority audiences) became turned off by these types of films. 40 to 70 years later, almost everyone around the world doesn't want to watch that anymore. Another 40 to 70 years down the line, the majority of people will be turned off by fake "ethnic" dialects by white voice actors too. The progressive push is starting here, and the industry will only go for inclusive casting more and more as time rolls on.

Inclusivity is never a bad thing, for any of those you listed. There are black and brown voice actors who are not being hired for black and brown characters because white voice actors are hired in their place. There are paraplegic actors who are not being hired because able-bodied actors are being hired in their place. Trevor Noah put the situation quite well over the controversy surrounding the original intention for Scarlett Johansson to play a transgender man, before she stepped down so an actual transgender man could play the role. Paraphrasing Mr. Noah, "The issue isn't that [non-minority actors] can't play the part. It's that [they] can play the part as well as any other part they want to play". Minorities don't get that option, especially in the voice realm, since casting directors will often go with a non-minority actor, meaning the opportunities they actually do get are few and far between. The changes that are happening now are making sure that the playing field is fair, where it absolutely wasn't before, and that's actually taking the to industry to a really good place.

Is it stated explicitly in the games that Bosco is african-american? Or in the comic? To me, that character model could be any number of ethnicities, from hispanic to a really tan white dude. But what do I know, I'm from Scandinavia. Is T.H.E.M. voiced by verified mariachis? https://samandmax.fandom.com/wiki/T.H.E.M.

Why exactly are you assuming that the devs did it to please someone other than themselves? If it's THEIR wish to make this change, because it reflects THEIR political views, what bad place is that exactly?