Subnautica Developer Canned Over Racist, Transphobic Tweets
Ana Valens
An online controversy over racist tweets is leaving one developer out of a job. Subnautica’s sound designer Simon Chylinski was fired from Unknown Worlds after users found multiple comments many deemed racist and transphobic.
Chylinski, who tweets from @Sy1K1 on Twitter, first faced online backlash after Twitter users discovered insensitive tweets from Chylinski expressing his political views. Comments included disparaging remarks against refugees to Europe, lumping African nations together and calling them misogynistic, making racist comments against India, and telling a transphobic joke that used “attack helicopters” as a punchline.
“Importing random people from the third world is also importing third world tier crime rates and IQ,” Chylinski commented over Twitter. “Now you are dealing with third world levels of dysfunction, condolences from Poland, but we tried to warn you.”
Chylinski’s tweets largely fall in line with viewpoints espoused by far-right politicians and activists, including unfounded and deeply racist claims arguing that non-European people have lower IQs than white ones. Shortly after the controversy began, Chylinski announced his firing on Twitter, later using the opportunity to make another “attack helicopter” joke and ask his followers to help him get a new job.
Game director Charlie Cleveland confirmed to Kotaku that Chylinski’s tweets led to his firing, calling them “hateful.”
“Over the weekend we discovered that one of our team members had made many hateful statements online that are against our company values,” Cleveland told Kotaku. “After discussing the matter with him, we decided to stop working with him immediately.”
Chylinski’s comments were originally revealed after a 2016 tweet from Cleveland resurfaced, in which he asked fans to choose between a female player character or improvements to Subnautica’s? “core game.” Cleveland has since apologized for the poll, calling it “terribly-worded” and admitting that he was “sad we didn’t make the main character female to begin with,” USgamer reports.
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