Respawn Entertainment, the team responsible for some of the last generation’s finest titles, from Titanfall, and its sequel Titanfall 2, the connected battle royale, Apex Legends, and even the generation’s best example of a Star Wars game, 2019’s Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, is fed up with the way developers within its own four walls, but also the industry more broadly, are being treated. The studio has issued a statement to all of those who’ve chosen to engage in such behaviour following several of their own developers being on the receiving end of horrible comments of recent times.
The comments, made to Twitter express an extremely firm stance towards the types of behaviour demonstrated online towards the studio’s own developers, saying,
Recently, we have seen increased harassment towards members of our development team.
We welcome community input, however, the line between constructive feedback and the harassment of our dev team cannot be crossed.
We want to remind our players that we have a zero tolerance policy for threats and the harassment of our developers. We will take appropriate action to ensure the health and safety of our team.
We love hearing feedback and will contiue to work alongside our community to foster a respectful, collaborative environment, and uphold the competitive integrity of our game.
The tweet from Respawn has spawned a wave of support from other game developers and personalities within the gaming world with Bungie throwing their support behind them as well saying, “Standing against toxicity and harassment takes all of us working together to build healthier communities. We are with you in that effort @respawn”, meanwhile Sony Santa Monica lead, Cory Barlog simply replied with supportive fist and heart emojis
Barlog himself has been a vocal spokesperson in the battle against inappropriate online behaviour towards developers, expressing his thoughts in July when fans were getting aggressive in their language as they awaited word about God Of War Ragnarok, declaring,
Our fans inspire us, and we understand the passion and desire for more information, but that passion should not be toxic nor come at the expense of any human being’s dignity. Let’s celebrate our community by treating each other, every game and developer alike, with respect.
When fans attempted to lay the blame elsewhere, Barlog was again firm in his thoughts
don’t. the answer is not to find someone to blame or focus hate on. maybe just pay it forward and treat the people that make the things we love with some human decency and respect. this is not a battle, we are not at war. we are just trying to make + enjoy things together.
Hopefully, outspoken personalities as well as studios themselves can continue to be so to thwart the horrific behaviour that stems from a percentage of the gaming fanbase.
