If you haven’t heard, THQ Nordic, the studio behind the recent Darksiders III, has been under fire after making a controversial decision to host an AMA on 8chan. The site has developed a reputation for housing racist, sexist, misogynistic, and other hateful content, as well as being eliminated from Google searches due to hosting child pornography. Now, an official apology has been issued.
After the AMA took place on Tuesday, February 26th, the company was immediately met with criticism and marketing director, Philipp Brock issued a statement in which he assured the community that he was allegedly ignorant to the history of 8chan. Now, the company’s co-founder and group CEO, Lars Wingefors has issued a formal apology for the distasteful actions that occurred last week.
Wingefors’ apology is as follows:
This letter is to offer my sincerest apologies and regret for THQ Nordic GmbH Vienna’s interaction with the controversial website 8chan last Tuesday, February 26. I condemn all unethical content this website stands for. Even if no one within the THQ Nordic Group would ever endorse such content, I realize simply appearing there gave an implicit impression that we did.
As Co-Founder and Group CEO of THQ Nordic AB, I take full responsibility for all of THQ Nordic GmbH’s actions and communications. I have spent the past several days conducting an internal investigation into this matter. I assure you that every member of the organization has learned from this past week’s events. I take this matter very seriously and we will take appropriate action to make sure we have the right policies and systems in place to avoid similar mistakes in the future.
As a Swedish based, fast growing group, we firmly support equality and diversity. We are also working actively to combat discrimination, harassment, and misconduct. We are already in the process of developing new work processes, based on the United Nations’ SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) and using the GRI (Global Reporting Initiative) standards, and we will accelerate this work going forward.
It’s still unfathomable that a company would make the decision to host an AMA on a website without knowing the details and awful history behind it. Why not just use Reddit, like most companies do?
What do you make of this apology? Does it come across as sincere? Let us know your thoughts.
[Source: Gamesindustry.biz]
