Steam User Finds Misogynistic "Joke" Buried in Dead Island Code [UPDATED]

[The-Epicly-Named-Man]

Let me get this straight... she has a skill... that does more damage... when she attacks men... and people are complaining about what it's named in the code more than the blatant misandry of that skill?

Seriously, if there was a male character that had a skill to do extra damage against female enemies (it could still be publicly named Gender Wars and privately named, I don't know, MisogynistAsshole or something) and people would, again, flip out on behalf of women.

Fallout has a Lady Killer perk which no one ever complained about. Recognising that there are different genders is different from insulting one.

OT; Shows how badly characterised Purna is, if even the devs dislike her :/. This was an extremely childish and careless mistake, although it isn't really something to get up in arms about.

 

[Aardvark Soup]

How can all these people see Dead Island's code? Is the game open-source (which I doubt) or are they meaning the game's binaries and resources?

 

[Rednog]

I'm amazed by people's reactions to this, it is one case if Purna was a positive example of a feminist, but if anyone actually bothers to listen to her back story she is definitely of the hate men and toss them all to the torch instead of women's equality. Hell she freaking castrated a guy with a gun and plans to murder him.
I mean how does this reflect on all women? It doesn't. The characters of the game are all Romero esque, they are all extreme caricatures with just insane logic and motivation.
Also, both of the female characters in the game were oppressed by men...

 

[Irridium]

Let me get this straight... she has a skill... that does more damage... when she attacks men... and people are complaining about what it's named in the code more than the blatant misandry of that skill?

Seriously, if there was a male character that had a skill to do extra damage against female enemies (it could still be publicly named Gender Wars and privately named, I don't know, MisogynistAsshole or something) and people would, again, flip out on behalf of women.

Doubtful. Fallout 3/New Vegas has a perk where you can do more damage to the opposite gender. Nobody seems to give a damn.

 

[GonzoGamer]

Wow. That means that somewhere out there, there?s an overworked programmer who feels bitter towards women. That?s a big surprise. Maybe he?s still upset because he had to take his sister to the prom.

This.

Agreed. It was a mistake to let it get released in this state, as stuff like this gets out.

Well, it?s just going to get worse. I know that the PC version of this game has received all the WTFs but now that so many consoles have HDDs and wifi, publishers have seemed to throw integrity completely out the window. They don?t mind releasing a game that?s completely broken as long as they can patch it later. And the sories that have been going around about this game make me wonder if they checked anything at all before sending it out.
The horror of Fallout New Vegas still lives fresh in my mind almost a year later. I couldn?t play that game for 15 mins without it crashing on me. I guess we should consider ourselves lucky this game actually works.

 

[Uber Waddles]

Escapist, what are you doing here?

This isn't news. This barely has anything to do with gamers or our culture. You expect us to be shocked? YOU MEAN PEOPLE STILL MAKE FEMINIST JOKES? Impossible. This article is literally the equivilant of some 4 year old laughing and saying "You said whore. I'm telling mommy!"

There are a lot of people in this world. Some with viewpoints different than yours. Some are misogynistic, others just view the idea of misogynmy hilarious. Its just a stupid line of coding, and if you find it offensive in any way, shape, or form than I don't respect you as a human being. There are far better things you could devote your time to than being upset because one person, who you will never meet, said "FemenistWhore". Its more than likely some inside joke, and even if its not. Who. cares.

Escapist - Seriously. Your news feed has gone to shit lately. You're not reporting news anymore, you're reporting fluff stories under the guise of news. Stories like this aren't important. Anonymous is not important (mostly, you're just feeding the trolls on those stories). Don't even get me started on your QQing about the Always On DRM policy either. Its dumb, and the QQing from it doesn't impact a good 90% of the audience. Stories like this, and your philosophy on paying some of your employee's (which, funny too, YOU NEVER COVERED), its getting hard to think of this site as credible. Get your act together.

 

[Frostbite3789]

Let me get this straight... she has a skill... that does more damage... when she attacks men... and people are complaining about what it's named in the code more than the blatant misandry of that skill?

Seriously, if there was a male character that had a skill to do extra damage against female enemies (it could still be publicly named Gender Wars and privately named, I don't know, MisogynistAsshole or something) and people would, again, flip out on behalf of women.

Both of the skills you mentioned exist in both Fallout 3, and Fallout: New Vegas. But guess what, nobody cared, because some programmer didn't decide to act like a moron when programming them into the game.

 

[Eleima]

"Feminist", okay, sure, why not, there's nothing wrong with being a feminist.
But "whore"?... Yeah, well done, that's well done...
Wonder how you can be stupid enough to do something like that...

 

[Fooz]

I bet if it said something against men on a male character, like "pig", nobody would say a thing about it being bad.

i know right, i mnot hating on women or anything, and i doubt many are offended by this, but the news will bring this up some way or another

e.g. *Woman News Reporter* "A games code has recently been in the news today, after a tasteless employee made a sexist remark in the games programming code, calling the female character a whore"

if it was about a man it would go a little something like this:

"A games code has recently been in the news today after making a funny little joke about a male character calling him a pig"

 

[Dogstile]

Am I missing something here? Someone's views that shouldn't have been left in the code was and we're up in arms about it?

I mean, it wasn't even meant to be seen. That's like stumbling on somebody's design notes, seeing a sexist comment and going on about how immoral it is. Who cares, you weren't supposed to see it, butt out. Chances are this is one programmer (who, lets be honest here, probably isn't a hit with the ladies, programmers don't usually get the girl, i should know, i am one) who was a little silly and everyone is overreacting. Again.

Yeah, stupid mistake, but not worth an uproar.

 

[orangeban]

Feminists are horrible creatures anyway. And just to show that I'm not chauvinistic. It will make you happy to know that I freaking hate chauvinists as well.

General equality is the way forward.

Sorry if I'm a bit thick, why are feminists horrible creatures?

Also, and this is a comment to most of the posters here, chauvinism =/= misogyny. If I am a male chauvinist it means I've a zealous support of maledom (is that a word? Probably not) and a zealous hatred of related but different parties such as femaledom. But chauvinism applies to anything, race, sports, gender.

 

[Voltano]

That just sounds like a variable name--a variable that inside the code, and nowhere visible in the game when it is running at run-time. I agree that the name could be insulting to women, but are we really bickering about what a programmer/game-designer names their variables in code that is never seen by non-hackers?

 

[TheAmazingHobo]

And this is the reason why you should always clean up your code.
Just take a couple of minutes to take out all the unnecessary whitespaces, breaks, placeholders, sexist jokes, demonic summons and threats against people who always leave the fuckning lab-door open, so everybody can just walk in and steal shit, STEVE.

That just sounds like a variable name--a variable that inside the code, and nowhere visible in the game when it is running at run-time. I agree that the name could be insulting to women, but are we really bickering about what a programmer/game-designer names their variables in code that is never seen by non-hackers?

Yes, we do, because obviously how we name our variables when we are bored, frustrated, annoyed and/or angry is totally an accurate way to judge us as a person.
Which is why I am OBVIOUSLY a demonic cultist and possibly dyslexic.

 

[orangeban]

Feminists are horrible creatures anyway. And just to show that I'm not chauvinistic. It will make you happy to know that I freaking hate chauvinists as well.

General equality is the way forward.

Sorry if I'm a bit thick, why are feminists horrible creatures?

http://evebitfirst.wordpress.com/2011/05/18/a-man-is-a-rape-supporter-if/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCUM_Manifesto

Things like this.

The feminists who actually fought for something would probably hate the feminists today.

Oh, I see the trouble here. See, those are shitty feminists, who don't actually want equality between men and women. Most feminists aren't like that, and in fact most feminists hate those shitty feminists as much as you do.

 

[Lord_Gremlin]

Sheesh, western people are so intolerant. So what if people on dev team hate feminists? It's their business.
IMO rabid feminists are just another bunch of idiots and make women look bad.

It's really bad in the West... Not to mention racism towards white people.

 

[jmarquiso]

Wow. That means that somewhere out there, there?s an overworked programmer who feels bitter towards women. That?s a big surprise. Maybe he?s still upset because he had to take his sister to the prom.

This.

Agreed. It was a mistake to let it get released in this state, as stuff like this gets out.

Well, it?s just going to get worse. I know that the PC version of this game has received all the WTFs but now that so many consoles have HDDs and wifi, publishers have seemed to throw integrity completely out the window. They don?t mind releasing a game that?s completely broken as long as they can patch it later. And the sories that have been going around about this game make me wonder if they checked anything at all before sending it out.
The horror of Fallout New Vegas still lives fresh in my mind almost a year later. I couldn?t play that game for 15 mins without it crashing on me. I guess we should consider ourselves lucky this game actually works.

Yeah, and Alpha Protocol which had some major issues out the gate (yay! Obsidian!), which ruined the games' sales. It is a patching culture, and digital distribution is going to make it worse.

In the case of Dead Island, this could have been controlled by management if they reviewed the code appropriately. The programmer should have been told to rename the skill at some point near release, if not as soon as it was noticed.

As an analogy - I work for television. We send people out to shoot some material that won't be able to be reshot. If a camera operator or location sound mixer makes a mistake - and they make mistakes - you can sometimes "fix it in post". But that doesn't mean that the camera operator or sound guy doesn't get some sort of warning or scolding. If the pattern continues, they get fired. I've watched shows that had had careless mistakes in them that could have been fixed at one point, but never have (a blatant example is a watermark of an effects package - which takes up the entire screen - that appears if you never register the software). These mistakes are careless and should never be delivered (not to say it doesn't happen).

While alright for a joke, this is a careless temporary name. While the majority of those who work in programming are male, it could be safe to assume no one would find this. Still, that reality is changing, and its jokes like this that may keep more women from joining the programming workforce.

 

[orangeban]

Feminists are horrible creatures anyway. And just to show that I'm not chauvinistic. It will make you happy to know that I freaking hate chauvinists as well.

General equality is the way forward.

Sorry if I'm a bit thick, why are feminists horrible creatures?

http://evebitfirst.wordpress.com/2011/05/18/a-man-is-a-rape-supporter-if/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCUM_Manifesto

Things like this.

The feminists who actually fought for something would probably hate the feminists today.

Oh, I see the trouble here. See, those are shitty feminists, who don't actually want equality between men and women. Most feminists aren't like that, and in fact most feminists hate those shitty feminists as much as you do.

Believing in equality between genders =/= feminist.

Anyone who labels them self with a gender specific philosophy is just as bad.

Ok, I label myself a feminist, a masculinist (male feminism basically), a transgenderist and an various other -ists relating to gender.

Surely if I label myself with *all* the gender specific philosophies it's good right?

 

[jmarquiso]

Believing in equality between genders =/= feminist.

Anyone who labels them self with a gender specific philosophy is just as bad.

Incorrect. The actual definition of feminism is that both genders are treated equally. This HASN'T HAPPENED YET, and females are still at a disadvantage.

 

[jmarquiso]

And this is the reason why you should always clean up your code.
Just take a couple of minutes to take out all the unnecessary whitespaces, breaks, placeholders, sexist jokes, demonic summons and threats against people who always leave the fuckning lab-door open, so everybody can just walk in and steal shit, STEVE.

That just sounds like a variable name--a variable that inside the code, and nowhere visible in the game when it is running at run-time. I agree that the name could be insulting to women, but are we really bickering about what a programmer/game-designer names their variables in code that is never seen by non-hackers?

Yes, we do, because obviously how we name our variables when we are bored, frustrated, annoyed and/or angry is totally an accurate way to judge us as a person.
Which is why I am OBVIOUSLY a demonic cultist and possibly dyslexic.

It's really just professionalism. Cleaning up code acknowledges that the code is used by everyone in the team, and that may include females that either are hired or will be hired. Leaving unnecessary jokes that may offend someone is just poor judgment.

 

[my_ledge_ends]

Well god damn it now even source code needs to be politically correct

Yes, yes it does. Is there a problem with that?