Epic Games condemns "disturbing harassment" of Ooblets developer Glumberland
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Epic Games’ recent partnership with Ooblets developer Glumberland has resulted in horrendous bouts of harassment towards the small two-person development team.
In a post on Medium, developer Ben posted some of the awful abuse that the two had received. Not only did they receive flurries of messages regarding suicide, alongside threats of violence and sexual abuse, but many messages included the following: racism, anti semitism and homophobia.
As a reminder, these are the sorts of messages that are being written of as a "woe-is-me saga".
CONTENT WARNING: Violence, anti-semitism pic.twitter.com/hyJZ2iMX2z
— Chris Bratt (@chrisbratt) August 7, 2019
After the overwhelming and disgusting abuse started to “make the rounds”, new publisher released a statement condemning the “disturbing trend” of personally attacking developers after they’ve made the move to Reddit.
“The announcement of Ooblets highlighted a disturbing trend which is growing and undermining healthy public discourse,” Epic said. “[Abuse] that’s the coordinated and deliberate creation and promotion of false information, including fake screenshots, videos, and technical analysis, accompanied by harassment of partners, promotion of hateful themes, and intimidation of those with opposing views.”
“Epic is working together with many game developers and other partners to build what we believe will be a healthier and more competitive multi-store world for the future. We remain fully committed, and we will steadfastly support our partners throughout these challenges. Many thanks to all of you that continue to promote and advocate for healthy, truthful discussion about the games business and stand up to all manners of abuse.”
Recently, Epic Games CEO has defended the company’s acquisition of exclusive titles, but the Ooblets situation is much more than that. This is harassment and abuse: it’s hideous and disgusting. With the die-hard Anti-Epic crowd heavily crusading against the need to download an additional 30mb launcher, the abuse only seems to be getting worse.
