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

[iamultraman]

The thing is, during programming, people tend to lose most mental functions as the works goes by. So what most likely happened was that this specific person just thought, "God I have no idea what to label this specific ability," and--as it's rather crucial to organize things properly in work involving a team--said to his compeers, "Hey, I'm going to call this thing FeministWhorePerna." Everyone gets his reasoning because of what the ability does and they probably get a few kicks out of it too as they are also suffering from brain atrophy. Obviously, the self-imposed writer meant to take it out at the final stage of production; the title only exists as a placeholder for a better title that can be thought of later on. That didn't happen.

Considering that I do this all the time when I program--though with more gravity on my wit--I sympathize wholly with this guy. I don't think this person deserves to be put on the chopping board for this, except for a stern lecture on naming things more properly. Such a situation shouldn't be used as a battleground for feminist dicussion because that's not the major problem here. Of course, as a forum goes, this is irrelevant because the discussion is now on the commentary rather than the article. So rage on.

 

[iamultraman]

And you know what? Feminism is a logical step. There. I said it. Women are treated unequally in the States and it's a problem, and I don't need statistics to prove what is true. But the way you do it, by advocating female individualism, is wrong. The notion of the female individual is derived from our old societal notions of women, which were the wrong ones. Saying "I am woman, I am strong" simply advocates the attitude implicated on you guys for a few centuries. If you truly want to be equal, you have to forge a new, neuter identity that is different from that of men and yet also harmonious with the opposite identity. Some feminists do that, which is admirable. It seems a whole lot don't and instead use feminism to push the agenda of "I", which is, pardon my French, being a total ***** (I use this word in such a context that it means a rather unpleasant female who bases this status on the pretense of being a female). The latter case only wants to further themselves away from the opposite gender. The former case wants to de-emphasize such intentions and instead create an identity of independence and merit without dependence on the male identity to mold it on. THAT'S WHY MEN HATE FEMINISTS. It's because you're not doing this. You're doing the other thing! If you all did this, I would be a hundred percent on board. No I'm not going to explain what I just said even though I'm having trouble parsing through.

 

[Vault101]

I dont find it that funny

though I dont know if this charachter is a "*****" or not...theres just somthing so hateful about the word whore

 

[Vault101]

I'm saddenned and offended that said bigot programmer didn't just type 'Feminazi', which is way more shorter, far more descript, and way more offensive, and thus would make this whole sitation that much more hilarious.

actually I find feminatzi less offensive (and probably wouldnt have a problem with it) but as i just said...I find somthign very hatful and mysoganistic about "whore"

 

[antipunt]

People of each/every group usually just support their own agenda. Period.

It's human nature. Even if something is minor/unintended/easily overlookable/anal-to-be-upset-over-by-the-outsider, if you're the target group you're gonna jump the bandwagon. I've seen it time and time again; nothing new.

 

[minuialear]

The thing is, during programming, people tend to lose most mental functions as the works goes by. So what most likely happened was that this specific person just thought, "God I have no idea what to label this specific ability," and--as it's rather crucial to organize things properly in work involving a team--said to his compeers, "Hey, I'm going to call this thing FeministWhorePerna." Everyone gets his reasoning because of what the ability does and they probably get a few kicks out of it too as they are also suffering from brain atrophy. Obviously, the self-imposed writer meant to take it out at the final stage of production; the title only exists as a placeholder for a better title that can be thought of later on. That didn't happen.

Although if the programmers didn't possess that kind of mentality in the first place, it wouldn't matter how tired they got: they still wouldn't have even thought of using those terms at all, never mind in a professional setting. It's analogous to being drunk: you don't do anything whilst drunk that you'd never dream of doing otherwise; you simply end up feeling less inclined to pay attention to the nagging feeling in your head that tells you to keep those thoughts/actions in check.

So there's still a problem with it, even though the programmers obviously weren't trying to purposefully offend everyone. And pretending that sexism doesn't have anything to do with the incident doesn't really help anyone.

 

[HassEsser]

Looks like I'm buying the game

 

[Aprilgold]

Men and women are equal, it's just that feminists, the ones called that, are well... that B word.

Well, instead of me having my long, winded ass thing, I decided to get someone with a similar Idea and edit out my fart of a paragraph for THEIR writing, because it was just that good.

And you know what? Feminism is a logical step. There. I said it. Women are treated unequally in the States and it's a problem, and I don't need statistics to prove what is true. But the way you do it, by advocating female individualism, is wrong. The notion of the female individual is derived from our old societal notions of women, which were the wrong ones. Saying "I am woman, I am strong" simply advocates the attitude implicated on you guys for a few centuries. If you truly want to be equal, you have to forge a new, neuter identity that is different from that of men and yet also harmonious with the opposite identity. Some feminists do that, which is admirable. It seems a whole lot don't and instead use feminism to push the agenda of "I", which is, pardon my French, being a total ***** (I use this word in such a context that it means a rather unpleasant female who bases this status on the pretense of being a female). The latter case only wants to further themselves away from the opposite gender. The former case wants to de-emphasize such intentions and instead create an identity of independence and merit without dependence on the male identity to mold it on. THAT'S WHY MEN HATE FEMINISTS. It's because you're not doing this. You're doing the other thing! If you all did this, I would be a hundred percent on board. No I'm not going to explain what I just said even though I'm having trouble parsing through.

I don't mind a joke, but don't make a joke that IS offensive openly. And programmers have their brains WRECKED while coding, so coding something a simple, short name, offensive or not, is just easier for them then putting in a more detailed one. Personally, its OK because their minds were dozing off, and its good to apologize, but they should have made their game complete and done all the stuff needed earlier.

 

[Hatter]

And what if he was being serious? Feminists are unreasonable creatures. So unreasonable they surpassed PETA a long time ago. They deserve all the hate they get.

Because 'Feminist Whore' is kind of an oxymoron. It shows more that whoever programmed it was just throwing together misogynist adjectives without stopping to think. It reminds me of the time a certain kid at my school described our housemaster as a 'Jewish Nazi'... I think that's one of the only times the phrase 'epic fail' really is applicable.

Or perhaps he did stop to think and intentionally made it an oxymoron, this whole thing isn't even worth the time any of us put into posting about it, especially since there is no context.

Techland's response was extremely political, I highly doubt the person who wrote it even gave a shit.

 

[kickyourass]

Well this is kind of a silly thing to get mad over, it was a stupid little joke that doesn't seem to be the guy's actual attitude, and the sentiment of this character being a "Feminist whore" doesn't come through in the actual game (at least as far as I know).

I agree that, joke or not, it should never have made it into the final code, but from where I sit getting really mad about this is roughly the same as getting mad about graffiti on the bathroom wall.

 

[ThunderCavalier]

:/ I've seen many people use feminist jokes like this in, while not necessarily tasteful, jest. Face it: we've all used the occasional racist quip and the sexist joke there, so we might as well embrace it. We've grown so used to hearing about these stereotypes or these offensive jokes that sometimes the little quip comes out now and again. Normally these jokes aren't done in any crude or vulgar manner, and are usually innocent. I honestly think the best way to overcome these racial or gender barriers that we've seemed to establish on each other is to acknowledge the fact that we've made these jokes, and simply laugh at them. If it's all in good fun, why try to spoil it?

... Except for the N-word. That honestly has way too much hate behind it to have a reason to live.

 

[Redout9122]

The most disappointing thing to me about all of this is the sheer number of people who flipped shit over one line of code.

Seriously people, calm down. It's not the end of the world?right?

 

[Defense]

Oh gosh, what a huge deal. I guess being a guy, I wouldn't understand, but I don't flip my shit whenever there's a misandric event happening on TV.

And you know what? Feminism is a logical step. There. I said it. Women are treated unequally in the States and it's a problem, and I don't need statistics to prove what is true.

Modern day "feminism" is not a logical step in the US(and many other developed countries), especially when they're equal in many cases and treated better than men in other cases.

 

[2012 Wont Happen]

I thought the code is funny.
The programmer was told to program in a sexist thing (something called "Gender Wars" allowing one gender to do greater damage to another) and so he gave it a sexist code.

Makes perfect sense. Makes for a good laugh.

 

[count9]

People need to lighten up, it's not hurting anyone.

 

[Twilight_guy]

Be warned coders: even your variable names and comments are being watched...

Who cares what some random programmer uses for a variable. Nobody is going to see the source code in most situations so it doesn't matter much. Not to mention that only the programmers are going to bother sifting through the junk so lots of this stuff isn't going to be monitored beyond does it work and does it work efficiently? Tell the guys not to use offensive jokes in their code (que proliferation of cracks at manegment in the comments) and move on.

 

[Turing]

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

Developer Techland has included some less-than-PC language in the code for Dead Island.

The code for Dead Island [http://www.amazon.com/Dead-Island-Pc/dp/B004PAGJMO/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1315486981&sr=8-3] has turned up some interesting things. Earlier in the week, it was revealed that the version of the game on Steam was actually a debug version never intended to be seen by the public [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/112801-Dead-Island-Dev-Could-Have-Released-Wrong-Version-to-Steam], and today we've learned that someone on the dev team seems to have an "interesting" attitude towards women.

Tucked away in the code for Purna's - a former cop, turned bodyguard - skills is an entry for a skill called "FeministWhorePurna." Steam user AlekseiVasiliev discovered the entry, and posted it to the official Steam forums [http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2106493]. It's thought that the entry refers to Purna's "Gender Wars" skill, which grants her a bonus to the damage she deals to male zombies. The fact that other entries in the file have names like "MeleeDurabilityPurna" and "TeamSpirit2Purna," which don't directly refer to the skills Purna uses in game, make this scenario seem all the more likely.

I'd imagine - or hope, at least - that this is some really, stupendously, dumb in-joke at Techland, and not indicative of someone's actual attitudes. All the same, this is not something that should have made it into the final code, even if Techland didn't think that anyone would see it. We've reached out to Techland to see if it has any comment on this discovery and will update when and if we hear anything back.

Update: Techland has issued a statement regarding the issue.

It has come to our attention that one of Dead Island's leftover debug files contains a highly inappropriate internal script name of one of the character skills. This has been inexcusably overlooked and released with the game.

The line in question was something a programmer considered a private joke. The skill naturally has a completely different in-game name and the script reference was also changed. What is left is a part of an obscure debug function. This is merely an explanation but by no means an excuse. In the end that code was made a part of the product and signed with our company name. We deeply regret that fact and we apologize to all our customers or anyone who might have been offended by that inappropriate expression.

The person responsible for this unfortunate situation will face professional consequences for violating the professional standards and beliefs Techland stands for.

Permalink

Slow news week, much?

 

[PinkiePyro]

I don't understand the problem really a programmer had a privet joke buried in the code where most players would not of seen it

 

[Eventidal]

I don't get it. Why is this bad?

A feminist can be a total whore, or *****, or whatever else they want to be. This is not the case of something calling all feminists - or even a certain group of feminists - whores, but... really, not even calling -A- feminist a whore. It's like putting LazyCouchFratBoy in your code as a skill. It's hardly an insult, and NOT directed at anyone at all. It's saying nothing. It's not a joke. It's not funny. It's not hurtful. There's nothing to apologize over!