The retro FPS, Ion Fury (which is using the same Build engine as Duke Nukem 3D did) got into a bit of scandal.

A week ago, Voidpoint, Ion Fury’s devs (the game was initially called Ion Maiden until Iron Maiden said muh name) got the attention of the media because on their Discord, they used sexist, ableist, and transphobic language, making jokes of leftists and social justice warriors. Then, 3D Realms (the publisher) and Voidpoint apologized in a statement, saying they no longer tolerate this, and they’ll donate ten thousand dollars to The Trevor Project (an LGBTQ suicide prevention company), patching out the problematic things out of the game.

Or not – there’s an announcement on Steam by 3D Realms and Voidpoint: „We’ve caused a recent controversy suggesting Ion Fury game content was to be censored. We will 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!”

There’s a much more homophobic slur in a development room (we’ll just write it down and say nothing else: fagbag), to which Voidpoint responded on Twitter: „The “fagbag” thing is a legitimate error made by a developer who doesn’t even live in an English-speaking country. It wasn’t a joke, political statement, or anything else. I asked him if it would be offensive in his country, he said no, I believe him. He removed it.” In another tweet, they talked about the PR turns of events: „We came up with an inoffensive joke we liked better, but the PR company responsible added an entire extra sentence to our original apology statement that made tons of customers think we were censoring the whole game. All we could do is come out and say “no censorship.” (And in a third one, they reaffirmed their The Trevor Project donation.)

3D Realms has also published a statement: „We at 3D Realms spoke with Voidpoint today and they reaffirmed their commitment to honouring their original statement, including the donation to The Trevor Project and sensitivity training. However, the soap bottle will not be removed. The use of the word “f*gbag” in an area that was inaccessible without hacking the game, and was added by one developer without approval from anyone else, was removed a few days ago. We once again apologize for this text as it does not reflect the values of 3D Realms or Voidpoint. Jokes at the expense of marginalized communities will not be present in future games published by 3D Realms. However, a portion of our community made it loud and clear they felt removing “Ogay” was censorship and should be protected by free speech. Voidpoint wanted to listen and we respected this decision.”

Ion Fury does have some sexual tone to it but wasn’t Duke Nukem 3D like that back in ’96…? (Ion Fury itself is a female Duke Nukem game…)

Source: Gamesindustry