In early summer of 2021, we had a thread regarding this situation. While it was discussed in the gaming community for a bit, it faded away fairly quickly. During today's Nintendo Direct, I hadn't even realized that Factorio was the game at the center of last year's controversy until being reminded of it on Twitter this afternoon.
With today's announcement that the game is heading to Switch and a number of positive posts about it in the Direct thread, it's important to shine a light on this. This is not a case of someone saying a couple ignorant things on Twitter ten years ago. This is recent and it is truly disgusting.
I'll try to recap as simply as possible:
- The Factorio team released a developer blog that referenced a programmer by the name of Uncle Bob.
View: https://twitter.com/factoriogame/status/1405834475997704193?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1405834475997704193%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=
- Uncle Bob is a racist, sexist and Trump supporter. Sourced information on that can be found in this blog post. When this was pointed out to the developers, one of the founders of the studio (and a director on the game), kovarex, had this to say:
- After it was pointed out that Uncle Bob said that women shouldn't be software engineers, kovarex defended him. After all, Uncle Bob might have some valid arguments as to why women shouldn't be software engineers and it would be unfair to label him a bigot:
- He also defended homophobia:
- As kovarex's problematic comments made the rounds, he doubled down on this through the Factorio Twitter account and mocked the situation by calling it free publicity. That tweet is still up.
View: https://twitter.com/factoriogame/status/1406038185424134144
- Perhaps most disgustingly, his comments also include an absolutely horrifying claim that statutory rape isn't actually rape. It's an "SJW term."
The director of this game and founder of the studio is literally defending rape on Reddit.
Please do not support this game.
With today's announcement that the game is heading to Switch and a number of positive posts about it in the Direct thread, it's important to shine a light on this. This is not a case of someone saying a couple ignorant things on Twitter ten years ago. This is recent and it is truly disgusting.
I'll try to recap as simply as possible:
- The Factorio team released a developer blog that referenced a programmer by the name of Uncle Bob.
View: https://twitter.com/factoriogame/status/1405834475997704193?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1405834475997704193%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=
- Uncle Bob is a racist, sexist and Trump supporter. Sourced information on that can be found in this blog post. When this was pointed out to the developers, one of the founders of the studio (and a director on the game), kovarex, had this to say:
- After it was pointed out that Uncle Bob said that women shouldn't be software engineers, kovarex defended him. After all, Uncle Bob might have some valid arguments as to why women shouldn't be software engineers and it would be unfair to label him a bigot:
- He also defended homophobia:
- As kovarex's problematic comments made the rounds, he doubled down on this through the Factorio Twitter account and mocked the situation by calling it free publicity. That tweet is still up.
View: https://twitter.com/factoriogame/status/1406038185424134144
- Perhaps most disgustingly, his comments also include an absolutely horrifying claim that statutory rape isn't actually rape. It's an "SJW term."
The director of this game and founder of the studio is literally defending rape on Reddit.
Please do not support this game.
