The creators of 90s throwback shooter Ion Fury is not going to take away homophobic content material from the game, citing censorship.
The just lately launched Ion Fury first made waves final week when a consumer at ResetEra found firm workers had made offensive comments in opposition to trans folks, feminism, and so-called social justice warriors over Discord.
“Something I don’t really understand about the social justice stuff is that they have stuff like the ‘slut walk,’ which I thought was about the right to not be harassed for how they dress but, then if you portray women dressed the same way you get shit for it,” wrote one developer referred to as Terminx in a dialog with different members of the Discord channel. Ion Fury includes a lady character within the protagonist function, however Terminx maintains there may be “no feminist slant.”
Game studio Voidpoint has stated these feedback had been taken out of context. “You should probably do your own research before coming to that conclusion,” wrote the developer tweeting in reply to 1 consumer who regretted buying the game after seeing the feedback from Discord. “The crop tool in Photoshop has always been just as much about what you are removing as what you are keeping.”
However, further homophobic slurs had been spotted in-game over the weekend, together with an in-game merchandise labeled “OGAY” – an obvious play on Oil of Olay – and a secret space that options the phrase “fag bag”.
Initially Voidpoint responded to the state of affairs with a promise to donate to $10,000 to the LGBT non-profit The Trevor Project, in addition to to patch out the controversial messaging seen within the game. But the studio has since walked again on the latter plan.
“We’ve caused a recent controversy suggesting Ion Fury game content was to be censored,” reads the joint assertion, posted to the Steam Community forums.
“We will absolutely NOT be censoring Ion Fury or any of our other games, now or in the future, including but not limited to by removing gags such as gaming’s most controversial facial wash.”
“We do not support censorship of creative works of any kind and regret our initial decision to alter a sprite in the game instead of trusting our instincts. 3D Realms and Voidpoint stand together on this matter.”
“Last but not least, please respect our need to keep our community forums clean from hateful messages, spam, or off-topic threads. We recognize our mistake and have received your message loud and clear!”
Since its launch on August 15, Ion Fury has acquired quite a few detrimental opinions on Steam from gamers who disapprove of the game getting censored. “By all accounts, Ion Fury itself is an excellent game and an excellent product, a labour of love from a time passed by, and from my own playtime with it i would agree with that assesment [sic]. I would recommend it to anyone strictly on that basis,” reads one of the top-rated user reviews for the game.
“However, I speak for myself foremost, but it also seems that i speak with a *lot* of other customers when i say that it feels like the release of this game, which was so much anticipated, has more or less been ruined by what has happened here with the real downspiral being triggered by 3D Realms decision to kowtow to a hate mob, clearly against the expectations of their own customers. This incident has become, in my opinion, an exemplar of what *not* to do.”
Ion Fury follows protagonist Shelly “Bombshell” Harrison, who was first featured within the 2016 game Bombshell. In Ion Fury, Harrison is out to cease Dr. Jadus Heskel and his military of cyber-cultists utilizing her Loverboy revolver and Bowling Bombs.
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