Tell me you don't know what the word means without telling.
Yeah, universal doesn’t mean “lowest common denominator” or “only supposedly normal people”. It means everyone. Which includes gay people, and straight people.
The game has options for straight romance, and gay romance. So it’s universal.
Duh.
No. Universal appeal means that something is liked by generally everyone, obviously without having issues that make it disliked by a ton. Like, idk, Mario Bros. Or water. Very few people dislike those. Basically everyone likes them. Straight people, gays, women, old people, young people, etc etc. Obviously your "but no it has to be gay and yellow and have a MAGA hat on and speak in tongues" kind of line of constraints only reduces the size of the group said thing appeals to.
Good thing is that in real life, universal appeal is also good business. And many companies doing stupid shit because some loud idiots that might not even be interested in the product itself told them to make it x
What? No.
Think about it. A universal entrance to a building would have stairs and a ramp, which accommodates everyone. Aka... universal.
Appealing to a subset of people, like only straight people, is decidedly not universal. The only straight people upset by the option to have gay romance are babies, and you'll never make them happy anyway. They can only whine, so there's no point in trying.
Let me make it more clear. If the game MADE you be part of a gay romance, then that's not universal. But it doesn't, right? For straight people, the game is literally equivalent to if there was only straight romance. The complaints are purely made-up in people's heads so they can have something to whine about. I have no patience for it.
Exactly. You can make a game with cars in it, with jumping in it, with nice pastel colors in it, and there's no large group in the world that will decidedly dislike those. But when you start doing woke catering of whatever minority themes for example, as you said, the game loses its universal appeal. Often, to even those minority groups too, as such forcing is almost always extremely inauthentic, patronizing them and insulting their intelligence. The obtuse Veilguard clips being shared recently really drive this home. Game might as well make you play Hitler "correctly" at that point, a total universal appeal suicide.
Before you say "but I don't like those men/muslims/women/terfs/gays/dog eaters/dog loving people!!!", that kind of argument is EXACTLY what disqualifies something from universal appeal. This is not hard.