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Dead Island Dev Apologizes For Offensive Skill Name Left In Code

by Phil Kollar on Sep 08, 2011 at 07:45 AM

Last night on the Steam forums, a Dead Island player revealed that he'd discovered a shockingly offensive skill name when digging through the game's code.

The ability, titled "FeministWh*rePurna" was discovered uncensored in the Data0.pak\Data\default_player_setup.scr file. It is believed to have been an early name for the Gender Wars skill, which gives female character Purna extra damage against male opponents.

Techland international brand manager Blazej Krakowiak provided the following response to Eurogamer:

"It obviously violates professional and ethical standards at Techland and should never have happened. We're investigating this right now and we'll issue a statement later. For now, I can only express my sincerest apologies for this incident and assure you that whoever acted so irresponsibly did not represent the views and opinions of Techland. I'm equally sure that aside from the author of that unfortunate line of code, everyone at the office is as disturbed by this as you are."

Techland responded further to Tracey Writes Stuff:

"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."

So what do you think? Clearly leaving this title in the code was a mistake, joke or not, but should the person responsible be in trouble or is the situation being blown out of proportion given that the offensive line in question didn't make its way into the game itself?