10 Recent Video Game Disasters Developers Apologised For
7. Undead Labs Apologised For State Of Decay 2's "Punched Nazis" Controversy
Despite first releasing in 2018, State Of Decay 2 was back in the headlines earlier this year when Steam Marines 2 developer James Seow discovered that, among the random traits that survivors are given, there was a rather eyebrow-raising one.
Seow came across the trait "Punched Nazis," which though hardly controversial in of itself, was accompanied by text describing the attribute as making them "irritable towards other people."
Seow and others interpreted this as mocking progressive politics in the very least, or far worse, actively downplaying the harm caused by Nazis. Seow's many tweets about this also caused him to be blocked by the official State of Decay Twitter account.
With the ire building against Undead Labs, the game's official Twitter account eventually released a lengthy apology to Seow and offended players, while explaining that the negative attribute was a mere accident:
"When the Morale system arrived, it simplified our original nuanced concept of 'characters arguing for their beliefs' into a basic negative Morale effect, representing discord in the community... So today, this trait has a positive skill bonus and red text in the UI due to the likelihood of arguing. It's been that way for years and we never realised how confusing that looks until tonight (it's not common, and we have over 1300 traits)."
Seow nevertheless decried that it took Undead Labs more than a week to offer a proper response to the issue, though the controversy dissipated among the wider community relatively quickly following the apology.