Oh boy. Hello opened can. I would like you to meet this pile of worms I am trying to shove inside of you.
Dead Island was released on Steam in North America this week, and it was broken. The version released on the service, as you are all aware of by now, was a pre-release dev build. The game’s publisher, Deep Silver, promised to release the correct version as soon as possible, and apologized for the error. While a mistake like this was unfortunate, and the apology seemed to be accepted by the gaming community, today, Deep Silver is once again apologizing – only this time it’s due to a line of code found within the mistakenly released dev build.
According to a Steam post which has made many a round or two on the internet this morning, the line of code “Feminist Whore” was found listed as a skill for the character Purna – an ex-police officer turned celebrity bodyguard. It is assumed for now, that this skill was eventually renamed Gender Wars, which is in the final version of the game, which provides an extra 15 percent damage to male enemies.
Both Deep Silver and Techland, the developer, have issued statements on the matter. Each are posted below in full.
“These unfortunate actions were of one individual at developer company Techland and do not in any way represent the views of publishing company Deep Silver,” read a statement from the publisher to Tracey John (via Joystiq).
Techland’s response to Eurogamer reads: “It obviously violates professional and ethical standards at Techland and should never have happened,” Blazej Krakowiak, international brand manager, told Eurogamer. “We’re investigating this right now and we’ll issue a statement later. “For now, I can only express my sincerest apologies for this incident and assure you that whoever acted so irresponsibly did not represent the views and opinions of Techland. I’m equally sure that aside from the author of that unfortunate line of code, everyone at the office is as disturbed by this as you are.”
And finally, Techland’s response to Tracey John: “It has come to our attention that one of Dead Island’s leftover debug files contains a highly inappropriate internal script name of one of the character skills. This has been inexcusably overlooked and released with the game. The line in question was something a programmer considered a private joke. The skill naturaly [sic] has a completely different in-game name and the script reference was also changed. What is left is a part of an obscure debug function. This is merely an explanation but by no means an excuse. In the end that code was made a part of the product and signed with our company name.
“We deeply regret that fact and we apologize to all our customers or anyone who might have been offended by that inappropriate expression. The person responsible for this unfortunate situation will face professional consequences for violating the professional standards and beliefs Techland stands for.”
Dead Island is out in the UK on Friday.
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