The following article was written in part using information revealed to me by sources at Voidpoint. I have also seen emails which helped corroborate what was said. As to not reveal who my sources are, some information has been kept vague down below, but I’ve done my best to detail as much as I can

On August 16th, a thread appeared on the gaming web forum ResetEra purporting that the game developers behind Ion Fury are bigots. The post was made by a member going by ‘Twenty5Thousand’ who then proceeded to share screen caps of conversations from the game’s Discord server. The general gist of their thread is that Voidpoint devs used the term ‘SJW’ derogatorily, and that they were transphobic for saying things like “yeah if you’re trying to decide your child is trans at birth you have mental problems and probably shouldn’t be a parent”

In the words of the person making the Era post, they “firmly believe these scumbags should be outed and should not be supported… By reaching out to 3D realms it may be possible to remove these individuals and make sure they don’t infect other projects.” As evidenced by their own words, they set out to make the thread with the goal of derailing the careers of those behind the creation of the game.

As is the case with most outrage bait on ResetEra, the thread took off, dissenting opinion was banned, and the media took notice. Within hours of the thread being live, I caught wind of it, and seeing exactly what was about to go down, I made a Tweet to try and rally support for the developers. As I would express, it is my opinion that what the devs said wasn’t transphobic. Parents shouldn’t decide at birth if their child is trans; it’s not at all how being trans works. But as with all things these days, rational thought didn’t matter and anger was going to rule the day.

Around this same time, The Daily Dot’s very own Ana Valens was shepherding her flock towards the gates of fury. As is her pedigree, she flaunted her own trans identity to rile up her base. She told the devs “either you’re cool with trans people feeling uncomfortable or you’re not” and in an effort to pile on even more emotionally charged buzzwords, she brought Gamergate into the mix. All this because of a few Twitter accounts the developers happen to follow.

(It should be noted that Valens also follows accounts with ties to GamerGate, including, but not limited to, Eron Gjoni, the writer of the so called Zoe Post which kicked off the entire event back in 2014.)

Not satisfied with ending it there, she would also Tweet out one particularly strange thread that at best is just a horribly misguided interpretation of the game, but at worst, a purposefully incendiary bulk of claims meant to further stoke the early embers of what would soon become a full on firestorm.

“Whew. Ion Fury is about a cis woman (conveniently codenamed Bombshell) tasked with killing a “transhumanist […] cybernetic cult” leader. Hard to read this in good faith given the dev’s transphobia. Games industry peers: Now as ever is a good time to come out criticizing the developer’s behavior and professing your support for your trans colleagues. #ProtectTransGameWorkers I’m so tired of this. Cis journalists, devs, players, writers, please speak out about this shit. It harms our safety and sense of belonging in this industry. #ProtectTransGameWorkers”

Given her past track record, it’s hard to view any of that in good faith, and in this writer’s opinion, it appears as if she is tacking on hashtags and making extremely “out there” takes on the game in an effort to further paint the devs as transphobic, as it helps her own career. She has a habit of making bold claims when it comes to transgender issues, and often her own writing is laced with controversy. Maybe not so surprisingly, in private DMs between a Twitter user named PixelMetal, Ana once admit to not wanting to write about Gamergate, but that she did so because she needed money. She would also proceed to talk trash about The Mary Sue website, while writing at that particular website. These are actions that at face value paint a portrait of a journalist who is disingenuous, and who has a lot to gain from our modern outrage culture.

One of two images PixelMetal has shared

Speaking of which.

As the weekend progressed, journalists on ResetEra and Twitter began catching up on events, and eventually articles began popping up on GameRevolution, TheGamer, and GameInformer. As is expected in today’s media climate, the coverage was almost entirely one-sided, with the developers being painted as bigots. This only extended further as the days passed and websites such as Eurogamer, MCV, GameIndustry, and IGN labeled the Discord comments as transphobic.

After reading the comments myself, and after speaking with some of the developers in private, I’m comfortable in stating for the record that they aren’t bigots. People in gaming media are applying no reasoning or logic within their reporting. Take for example one comment highlighted by GameRevolution. Within it, the lead at Voidpoint, writing under the name Terminx, says: “something I don’t really understand about the social justice stuff is that they have stuff like the “slut walk” which I thought was about the right to not be harassed for how they dress but then if you portray women dressed the same way you get shit for it.”

His viewpoint is based around how sexualized characters in gaming often get lambasted by the press, see Polygon’s review of Bayonetta 2, or Kotaku’s anger towards Soul Calibur, but then things like the Slut Walk or the recent Twitch ‘Slutstream’ is celebrated. Whether one agrees with his comparison or not, to suggest he’s a woman-hater because of it is entirely inaccurate. Yet that is the narrative springing up on ResetEra, and how quite a few gaming websites have framed their coverage as well.

After speaking with a member of the team who’d like to remain anonymous, I can again state with certainty that there is little to no bigotry behind the scenes. This one particular dev has a transgender family member, and while there are concepts they struggle to understand (which is normal), they fully support this person’s transition. In their own words there are things they are “ignorant” about, and they don’t fully “get” their family member’s issues, but “they’re happier now and I love [them] anyway.”

Being that I’m trans, I allowed them to ask me anything and everything about my gender dysphoria, and we had a long and enjoyable discussion about transgender issues. This would end with them expressing “thanks for being open to my stupid questions about trans stuff btw”, before following it up with “I wish more people understood that ignorance isn’t hate.”

As our conversations continued throughout a period of a few days, it steered into other topics, including the controversy surrounding an art asset in the game that says ‘Ogay’. It’s on a bottle of soap, and is a harmless pun meant to be a play off the popular skin care brand ‘Olay’. The media and ResetEra are using it as proof of homophobia, because of course they are. Although, as with everything else in this disaster of a situation, it wasn’t there to be malicious; the devs just thought it was funny.

Ion Fury is a game that relishes in 90’s era first-person-shooters and it’s massively inspired by Duke Nukem. The humor is immature and crass, as is the humor of the developer I spoke to. We shared a lot in common in that regard, and at one point we even began joking about a South Park episode wherein the characters in the show start calling motorcyclists “fags.” I bring this up because it’s important to realize that language is contextual, and everyone uses words in different ways. What’s offensive to you isn’t necessarily offensive to me, and vice versa. In my case, I’m literally gay, and I call my partner that word and we giggle over it. As it pertains to the developer, him and his wife do the same. Not because they’re bigots, but because they have their own unique sense of humor.

If there’s one major failing here, it’s that the developers didn’t properly consider how they were making a game for a wide audience, and that anyone and everyone could join their game’s discord. I think there was a narrow-minded approach to some of their management. The devs have an odd sense of humor, and they were making a game based off cheesy 90’s shooters. It is my impression that they assumed their audience would be like them. So they shared jokes and opinions and expressed things that developers at a major studio probably know not to do.

Hell, Voidpoint as an LLC only exists because the lead developer needed something to protect himself in case he got sued. It maintains no actual employees.

Something the media forgets is that no single piece of entertainment can appeal to everyone. If a joke in a game or film or whatever else doesn’t land for you, that doesn’t mean it was made out of malice. It often just means the creators used words within their own paradigm that they find humorous for a bevy of reasons. If you don’t like it, just go find another piece of work that does appeal to you, of which something else will most certainly exist. All outrage culture is doing is stripping creative freedom from the hands of those that make art, and it’s asking them to conform to a single mindset. And that’s not what art is supposed to be.

Another point of contention within the media is that a member of the development team said “the whole sjw concept is getting upset on behalf of other people.” The ResetEra thread also included a screenshot where Terminx said “what kind of crazy person decides to ruin your life because they disagree with you on the internet.” A comment that was directed at so called SJWs. The irony being that this message board, and multiple journalists, are starting to do just that.

Maybe Terminx was onto something.

I’m not going to sit here and tell you whether every opinion of the developers is right or wrong. That’s not my job, and at the end of the day, they are opinions. People are allowed to think different things, and this industry has a problem where it punishes so called ‘wrong-think’, which is exactly what is happening here. Voidpoint staff are being painted as bigots who hate the LGBT community, and for what? Some stupid jokes and because they don’t think parents should decide if an infant is trans?

It would be lying through omission if I didn’t bring up a comment about “mutilation” that is under fire. This is the idea that trans people who decide to go through with gender reassignment surgery are mutilating themselves, a thought which was shared by a dev on the team. It’s a sentiment I disagree with, but what does ruining these people’s careers over a lone opinion accomplish? How does that make them more open minded to the notion of transgenderism? This environment of moral grandstanding and outrage is not benefiting anyone. Hate begets hate. And, while some would vehemently disagree with this, even if the devs did hate trans people, let them. A message board isn’t going to convince them to change their ways, and a hate brigade will only push such individuals to double down. Speak with your wallet and just move on. Other games exist.

Another important side to all of this that is being ignored, is that the game was made by a global developmental team. Of the roughly 20 devs, only 3.5 of them reside in the United States; the extra half stemming from an art assistant who isn’t a full-time team member. The rest of Voidpoint consists of people living in/near Finland, Russia, Mexico, and elsewhere.

It’s easy to see a word and get uppity, but few people, if any, are taking into consideration the differences between cultures. It makes sense why this would go neglected on a message board that gets off on controversy; they’re not going to take into account anything but that which makes them angry, but it’s an unforgivable sin to the journalists who’d rather just peddle outrage than do honest journalism.

Enter “Fagbag.”

This is a phrase that was found in an out of bounds area within the game. Naturally this added to the pile of homophobia claims Voidpoint is being buried under. The truth of why it’s there, however, is not due to the reasons one might think.

A developer residing in a foreign country put it in the game. As to not out their identity I will be keeping certain things vague, but as has been told to me, they were tired of seeing the name “Grabbag.” That is a song title from the Duke Nukem series, and as a joke amongst themself, they wrote “fagbag.” The string of words it appeared in also contains shorthand names of other songs. As has been recounted to me, the dev simply forgot to change it before the game shipped, and nobody else knew it was there. The fact that this dev is foreign is important as in their language, “fag” doesn’t mean the same as it means in the United States. When asked if calling someone that word in their home country would be horribly offensive, they reportedly said “no.” They also denied knowing of its connotation within the US.

I suppose they could be lying to save face, but everything I’ve seen suggests otherwise. For what it’s worth, one source at the studio is furious about the situation, and the person in question got chewed out.

With the media doing no due diligence and just reporting on a controversy born from a web forum without trying to understand the context of the situation, Voidpoint and their publisher 3D Realms quickly found themselves inundated with calls to take action. This regrettably led to a public apology, a donation to clear the air, and a claim of sensitivity training occurring sometime within the near future. The latter being tongue-in-cheek as their ‘sensitivity training’ is the incident as a whole.

“We’ve been very clearly trained to just never say a god damn thing about anything sensitive in public ever again because some[one] will take it out of context and… shit it out on us when we’re least expecting it.”

As everything must now be a culture war, the apology caused supporters of the game to turn on it. As would be expressed countless times on social media and elsewhere, the “developers bent the knee to SJWs,” and this resulted in widespread calls to refund the game. As a source would tell me, sales of the game are a mess A frustrating turn of events as almost nobody got paid up front to work on the game, and for the devs to reap the most benefits, they need to sell more copies. As per their contract, the cut their publisher receives goes down the more sales there are.

In managing an angry community there‘s been missteps as people have been banned from Ion Fury’s Discord server and Steam community. One moderator even expressed he hates gamers, though this person has no formal ties to the studio. Muddying things further is that concerns about censorship have been addressed in a confusing manner, but the reaction has still been overblown.

While discussing the online fallout, a developer told me they felt as if they had been “thrown under the bus big time,” and that 3D Realms and their PR company, Stride, was responsible for the apology. There was resistance, and as has been expressed:

“If we had actually done everything their PR wanted us to do we’d be double plus fucked compared to where we are now.”

Having seen proof, I can confirm this is the case. 3D Realms, Voidpoint, and Stride had discussions where tensions were high. Things have been bungled, there’s been mistakes, but my impression from what I’ve seen is that they just wanted to get the controversy swept under the rug. Even the timing of it was chosen in such a way that it’d be buried by Gamescom.

But best intentions or not, the devs felt pressure from above to work with Stride because they were told they are experts at handling media and PR scandals. This was met with contempt as Voidpoint only wanted to release a statement that was honest and that anything else would just be letting the bullies win. However, it was suggested they couldn’t reason their way out of it. Bad things had been said, and it was too click-worthy a story for the press to ignore. They were just going to have to roll with it and keep quiet.

The apology sent to the press

At some point in time a lone employee discussed how making a donation to a suicide hotline for LGBT youth named the Trevor Project would be a good idea.This caused even more turmoil at the studio as the decision to donate money, while done once again with the best intentions, is seen as caving in to public pressure. A feeling exacerbated by the apology they were pressured into giving for things that are not clearly bigoted, and the censorship of content arriving in the form of a patch to remove “unacceptable language” (this may change). Various devs knew how it would be seen and the division it would cause. Fears which came true as the moment the apology came out, fans turned their back on the company.

Though perhaps some people just wanted to be angry no matter what. Long before the game ever released, a 3D Realms employee who had no hand in the actual development of Ion Fury made a post on Steam where he showed off the evolution of Ion Fury’s main protagonist Bombshell. As she is a character in Duke Nukem’s universe, her earliest concept art stems from 1997, and as the post would discuss, her original design was quite sexualized. Something the writer, Frederik Schreiber, would deem “embarrassing.”

Concept art from 1997

A small sect of the gaming sphere saw the post and began screaming censorship. They went with the narrative that the developers had become SJWs because the new version of the character isn’t overtly sexual. Whatever your thoughts about her design, she wasn’t changed to appeal to anyone for any political reasons. The devs made her as they did because that’s what they wanted. It was just some 3DR guy who then jumped in to virtue signal, a move which pissed the developers off.

Browse Reddit, 4Chan, Twitter, or elsewhere, and some people are legitimately mad she isn’t sexualized. A potentially important part of this story as it’s time to put the tin foil hat on.

Not long after the ResetEra thread that kicked off this entire controversy was made, a post went up online taking credit for the incident. At face value it just seems like a troll seeking street cred, but upon Googling ‘Twenty5Thousand’, some interesting results pop up. Including, but not limited to, a GameFaqs account. Within this account are postings that complain about characters not being sexualized enough, an interesting juxtaposition to an account of the same name on ResetEra that has a habit of kicking off controversy.

This Ion Fury thing is not their first rodeo, and they were actually the person who got ResetEra riled up enough to push Activision into changing the name of a character skin in the recently released remaster of Crash Team Racing. The skin was a summertime one called ‘Watermelon’, and Twenty5Thousand got people to think it was racist.

In case there’s any doubt that the Gamefaqs account and ResetEra one are the same person, after I made a Tweet suggesting they were a troll, they made a thread on ResetEra owning up to their GF account. Not long after, yet another post went up on 4Chan, though it was quickly deleted.

Ultimately there’s no way to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Twenty5Thousand is a troll, though enough evidence certainly exists to make it believable. A plot twist to this entire incident that is nothing short of maddening. Just allow yourself to comprehend it. A troll potentially made a thread on a fringe left gaming web forum known for engaging in outrage culture, and by using year old messages from a Discord server, they kicked off an event that rallied the media to run hit pieces, forcing an apology and censorship from a publisher trying to bury a bad story, which only served to throw innocent developers under a bus, and now their audience is turning on them.

If this doesn’t show just how broken this entire medium is, I don’t know what does. It not even limited to just gaming, either. If a troll did kick this off, it’s a shocking peek behind the curtain as it reveals just how easily outrage culture can be weaponized, and for the dumbest of reasons at that. And even if Twenty5Thousand is who he claims to be, I still argue this industry is broken. We now reside in a society where mostly harmless opinions and immature school age jokes must be suppressed lest the media mobilize to shoot you down.

There’s only one word to sum up this entire situation, and that is ‘sad’. Voidpoint is a hardworking team of developers who made Ion Fury as a passion project throwback to a genre of game they grew up on. At least one developer at Voidpoint lives with a debilitating disability, and this project was something they fought and struggled to finish. They pushed through to completion because they wanted to prove they could make something of themself. Now, thanks to the weaponization of outrage culture (from both sides), their future is in doubt. Tensions and relationships at the studio are fraught, what was a good working relationship with a publisher is now on the edge, and worse still is that some developers now want to walk away from the studio. And for what? Because some team members shared opinions others disagree with.

In recent months the gaming press has shared stories of dev teams facing abuse from fans, and the entitled gamer has once again become a narrative rearing its ugly head. But what is more entitled than believing that careers and livelihoods should be ruined all because developers have opinions that differ from theirs? How in any way is the media better than those they constantly try to frame as toxic?

As I work on this piece I find myself in conflict. I love this hobby. I have a deep rooted passion for it. But now it’s been weaponized and used against everyone. Some shitty web forum was able to cause a ruckus, the media never failing to engage in bullshit ran with it, a publisher pressured an apology, and then culture warriors jumped in to make the situation even worse. A tiresome cycle that’s been repeating ad nauseam for years now, but to what end? What’s being accomplished here? Other than ResetEra being told their bullshit obtains results. I look around and I see nothing good; it’s just an endless fight where people who don’t deserve to be hurt are becoming casualties of a stupid metaphorical war between two sides who at this point just frankly suck.

Outside the confines of this nonsense that is being waged every day are average people who just want to make good games. And sure, sometimes they say stupid things, or they express opinions they maybe shouldn’t, or they don’t realize the risks in making something for a wide audience, but that doesn’t change the fact that they are people with real feelings, and who also suffer like the rest of us. Yet in the words of ResetEra, they should just be removed as to not infect other projects. A overt admission that everyone was all too willing to allow. They played us like a damn fiddle.

For shame.