Dead Island developer, Techland is having a bad week. After a debug version of the game was accidentally released on Steam, earlier this week, the developer issued an apology for the buggy game. Just days later, a gamer has discovered a line of hidden code in Dead Island that names a skill as ‘feminist whore’. This name doesn’t appear in the actual game, but the offensive line of code has sparked outrage.
The skill applies to Purna, a female character who scores more points for killing male zombies.
Techland has openly apologised for the incident and issued this statement: "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 naturally 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."
It’s sad to think that this sort of language could be seen as a joke by anyone, even if it was never intended to be seen by anyone. Hopefully a stupid mistake by one individual and not a reflection of their actual beliefs.
