Explaining the controversy over racism in Mordhau’s community
Update:
Following the confusion over Mordhau developer Triternion’s official stance on a diversity toggle, the team has issued a second statement on the matter denying plans to ever add such a feature.
In a post made on Mordhau’s community forums, Triternion blames the confusion on a “misunderstanding” and lack of PR experience for the two developers interviewed by PC Gamer. “First and foremost, Triternion does not, nor have we ever, had plans to add a customization option that would force a white male default,” Triternion writes in a new statement. “This is an absurd idea that stems from a misunderstanding in a recent interview by PC Gamer with two of our artists.”
“The responses given were referring to the gender part of the question, which were based off an old controversial ‘gender toggle’ idea, with the intention being to give the player options to play the game with only female characters, only male characters, or both.”
Triternion says the idea to toggle genders in Mordhau was quickly dismissed, but that the artists from the studio interviewed were not properly briefed on this. “Our official stance is that these toggle options are out of the question.”
The studio also brought up the toxicity within its own community, but says Triternion has neither the experience “nor the manpower or resources” to manage a community of its size. As an 11-member team of first-time developers, Triternion says it just can’t moderate its community to an “intended level of standards.”
You can read Triternion’s full statement on the Mordhau forums.
Original story follows:
Things are getting complicated for the rising multiplayer hack ‘n slash, Mordhau. Contradicting reports have arisen regarding the developer’s handling of alleged instances of racism and sexism.
Mordhau began as a small project by Slovenia-based developers Triternion. Inspired by the medieval PvP online game, Chivalry: Medieval Warfare, Mordhau is also a medieval-themed multiplayer game. It has since sold more than a million copies on PC.
Yesterday, PC Gamer published a story about toxicity within the Mordhau community. The story reported instances of racism and other hostilities within the Mordhau forums and Discord community. The community has even created its own racially-charged epithet to describe a Modrhau character’s loadout.
Mordhau developer Andrew Geach told PC Gamer that the team doesn’t find the specific term “racist or offensive, and considering the thread’s content, we find it even less so” Geach added, “We do understand however that some people may interpret it as being racist or inappropriate if taken out of context.”
Throughout the original report Triternion stressed player freedom and a reluctance to implement any social media policies that could be considered as “censorship.” This includes its in-game chat system which doesn’t include word filters of any kind, even for the most rudimentary of curse words.
“We want to put the power in the players’ hands,” developer Mike Desrosiers said to PC Gamer. “If we take an official stance and we put an official filter list on all the words in chat, people will, first, find a way around it, and it might catch innocent words, or people might claim we’re censoring.”
Triternion was reportedly hesitant of even adding diversity to its character creation tool. While there are plans to expand the character creator to add female or non-white characters, Triternion also reportedly considered a toggle that would disable seeing non-white, non-male characters if some players preferred.
Triternion said that if they were going to add “a Middle Easter person or a female or a black person,” they would do it “properly” by creating original assets and textures that accurately represented these characters. But they also reaffirmed their pursuit of player’s choice. “And so, ideally we’d put the power in the players’ hands, and give them the option to enable and disable different things,” Desrosiers said.
After the publication of PC Gamer’s story, Triternion denies ever discussing such a toggle feature.
In a statement published on Mordhau’s official Twitter account, the team said, “We do not, nor have we ever had plans to add a toggle to hide other ethnicities or “disable characters that aren’t white” in Mordhau.
We do not, nor have we ever, had plans to add a toggle to hide other ethnicities or “disable characters that aren’t white” in Mordhau. Any claims to the contrary are false. Official statement coming soon. 2/2
— MORDHAU (@mordhaugame) July 2, 2019
The original story has already generated discussion within Mordhau’s community. On Steam, one thread asked the developers to not “add in a “disable female and POC” option.” Though responses to the thread have also been divisive.
“It’s not racist or sexist to not want women or PC in a ****ing video game jesus christ,” writes one user. “Having black knights and tiny women running around in a full plate breaks immersion.”
PC Gamer responded by publishing a transcript for the portion of the interview that discussed the diversity toggle. PC Gamer asked the developers if there were discussions of “giving the option for players to disable [diversity]” to which Geach responded, “Yeah, that seems to be the current thinking. It’s not set in stone, it depends on how our community is in the future.”
A comment on Mordhau’s Steam forums by someone on the Mordhau team from April also mentions the diversity toggle and says “The realism complaint is valid, so when we add them we might add a simple client-side toggle (for both female and male characters) which would let you disable them.”
We reached out to Triternion for clarification on the matter, but as it stands this has been a tumultuous news cycle for the burgeoning online multiplayer game.
Matt Kim is a reporter at IGN. You can reach him on Twitter.
