Two of Night In The Woods‘s creators have introduced they’re “cutting ties with” Alec Holowka, the third co-creator, following allegations of abusive behaviour and sexual assault made in opposition to him this week. “We take such allegations seriously as a team,” Scott Benson and Bethany Hockenberry stated in Wednesday’s assertion. They have now cancelled one unknown “current project” and are suspending NITW’s deliberate bodily launch.
“This week, allegations of past abuse have come to light regarding Alec Holowka, who was coder, composer, and co-designer on Night In The Woods. We take such allegations seriously as a team. As a result and after some agonizing consideration, we are cutting ties with Alec,” the game’s official Twitter account stated in a multi-tweet statement.
They say the NITW boxed launch coming from Limited Run Games is postponed, whereas the iOS model “is being handled by an outside company and supervised by [publishers] Finji and will remain in development.” Beyond that, they don’t know.
“Going forward, Night In The Woods will be handled by Bethany and I,” Benson wrote. “We’re not sure what that all means yet. This stuff takes time.”
The two already founded a new studio, The Glory Society, with Wren Farren–and with out Alec Holowka–again in March.
Night In The Woods is a story of rising into maturity in a Pennsylvania-ish rural city, humorous and heat and bittersweet and tragic. Also, all of the individuals are animals. And it has a knife-fight purely for funsies, which I’m all the time game for. We known as it one in every of the best PC games of 2017 and had a glowing review too. It’s meant quite a bit to me, a complete trash mammal.
Benson additionally tried to supply context for gamers who may now be second-guessing their relationship with the game. He explains that he was the “artist, lead animator, co-designer, co-writer, and the guy who wrote almost all of that dialogue in the game,” whereas Hockenberry was “co-writer and researcher.” While Holowka undoubtedly performed an enormous function within the game, a whole lot of its tales are from these two.
“Much of Night In The Woods is pulled fairly instantly from our lives. Bethany is from a tiny valley in central PA. I’ve lived out right here in Western PA for about 20 years. The characters are us, and other people we’ve recognized. The locations are ones we all know.
“Thousands of individuals have related with Night In The Woods in a really private means. We can’t inform you easy methods to really feel about any of this. Whatever you’re feeling is legitimate. Your expertise with artwork is yours. What it means to you is yours, no matter the rest.”
We contacted Alec Holowka for remark this week following the allegations and haven’t but heard again.
Holowka is one in every of a number of folks within the games business this week accused of inappropriate and abusive behaviour, professionally and personally, primarily by feminine and non-binary builders. Coming in within the wake of an preliminary accusation made by Tetrageddon Games creator Nathalie Lawhead in opposition to composer Jeremy Soule, it jogs my memory of Hollywood’s #metoo motion. As actors opened up about abuse within the film enterprise, allegations they’d saved secret for concern {of professional} reprisal, it emboldened but extra to talk up. We should be cautious in how we report on these.
