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Tag: Sucker Punch Productions

  • PlayStation Studio Boss Breaks Silence On Dev Fired For Charlie Kirk Joke

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    For the last week, a war has been waging in the YouTube comments of each new Ghost of Yotei trailer as the PlayStation 5 exclusive nears its release date early next month. That’s because a developer at Sucker Punch Productions joked about the assassination of Charlie Kirk on social media. Sony confirmed it had parted ways with the employee following a right-wing pressure campaign, but declined to issue any further statement. Now studio head and co-founder Brian Fleming has commented on the firing directly in a new interview.

    Sucker Punch artist Drew Harrison, a nearly 10-year veteran of the studio, posted “I hope the shooter’s name is Mario so that Luigi knows his bro got his back” on the day the assassination took place. Less than 24 hours later she confirmed she’d been fired. “Drew Harrison is no longer an employee of Sucker Punch Productions,” a spokesperson for Sony told Kotaku at the time.

    “The facts are accurate,” Fleming told Stephen Totilo’s Game File when asked about the situation. “Drew’s no longer an employee here. I think we’re aligned as a studio that celebrating or making light of someone’s murder is a deal-breaker for us, and we condemn that, kind of in no uncertain terms. That’s sort of our studio, and that’s kind of where we are.”

    YouTube / Kotaku

    Despite Harrison’s swift firing, angry internet users, urged on by clout-chasing culture warriors like Mark “Grummz” Kern, have been demanding Sony take action against any staff members who may have liked or reposted Harrison’s comment, while also targeting other companies and their employees over potential anti-Kirk sentiment. That included Bethesda, which was accused of mocking the right-wing podcast’s supporters when it posted a clip from Indiana Jones and the Great Circle of the famous Nazi puncher saying to a kitten, “You don’t care much about these fascists, do you?” It was later deleted.

    Microsoft Gaming employees were also targeted, including by Elon Musk. “We’re aware of the views expressed by a small subset of our employees regarding recent events,” the company announced in response on September 12. “We take matters like this very seriously and we are currently reviewing each individual situation. Comments celebrating violence against anyone are unacceptable and do not align with our values.” A spokesperson for the company declined to comment when asked if anyone had been fired from Microsoft following these investigations.

    “Sucker Punch is amazing & one of the last few bright shining lights in the game industry,” Harrison posted this week. “I still support them and I cannot condone any animosity directed at them. It’s truly all the best people.”

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    Ethan Gach

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  • Ghost Of Yotei Dev Fired Over Charlie Kirk Joke After Pressure Campaign

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    A contingent of right-wing online figures and their followers have been using the recent assassination of conservative podcaster Charlie Kirk to punish people they don’t like. That includes a developer at Ghost of Yotei maker Sucker Punch Productions who Sony confirms it has parted ways with after she made a joke on social media about the shooting.

    “I hope the shooter’s name is Mario so that Luigi knows his bro got his back,” Drew Harrison, a nearly 10-year veteran of the PlayStation studio, posted in the evening after Kirk was shot and killed during a speaking event at Utah Valley University. A few hours later, the post was screen-grabbed and shared by anti-woke crusader Mark “Grummz” Kern.

    “Suckerpunch Senior Dev celebrates Charlie Kirk’s death,” he wrote. “Ghost of Yotei is dead to me now.” A streamer who goes by Madamsavvy responded, “No more. Cowards keep quiet. The studio deserves to go under.” Kern replied, “No mercy.”

    Harrison subsequently shared on social media that people had been contacting her employer angrily trying to get her fired, and posted a screenshot of a barrage of missed calls from anonymous numbers as evidence of an ongoing harassment campaign. Less than 24 hours later, she was fired.

    “If standing up against fascism is what cost me my dream job I held for 10 years, I would do it again 100x stronger,” she wrote.

    Sony confirmed her departure in an email to Kotaku but declined to comment further. “Drew Harrison is no longer an employee of Sucker Punch Productions,” a spokesperson from Sony Interactive Entertainment wrote.

    A loosely aligned “Gamergate 2.0” movement that grew out of conspiracy theories claiming DEI was ruining gaming has been hoping for this sort of outcome for months. The big PS5 exclusive has been in anti-woke activists’ firing line ever since Ghost of Yotei revealed the open-world samurai series’ latest entry would star a woman named Atsu, played by Erika Ishii.

    Fed by an algorithmically juiced YouTube rage factory, certain online culture content creators latched onto one of Ishii’s past comments about abolishing the police as a way to attack the game. Videos with titles like “Ghost of Yōtei DOOMED? Radical Activist Erika Ishii Brings Woke Chaos!” later changed to things like “Ghost Of Yotei New Trailer Sparks BACKLASH, Hiring Activists Backfires For Sony & Sucker Punch” as YouTubers combed LinkedIn for evidence proving that people with opinions they disagreed with were ruining games.

    Ghost of Yotei is far from the only high-profile blockbuster game to be dragged into this culture war quicksand. Kern and others attacked Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed Shadows as well for featuring an African samurai as one of its two main characters. Developers on the game were reportedly told not to comment on the harassment campaign when the game launched earlier this year.

    While Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot condemned attacks targeting employees, he also said at the time the company was working on “tackling the dynamics behind the polarized comments around Ubisoft so as to protect the Group’s reputation and maximize our game’s sales potential.”

    Members of the harassment campaign to get Harrison fired from Sucker Punch are already targeting individuals at other game studios and publishers over their social media comments. “Every single studio is compromised,” one of them wrote. “And it’s all American leftists doing this.”

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    Ethan Gach

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