Deck Nine, the studio behind Life is Strange, apparently had an issue with Nazi symbols and dog whistles mysteriously appearing in its work during development. In a new report by IGN, insiders spoke about toxic work culture and their concerns about someone trying to hide hate speech in their games.
Symbols included the number 88 (code for “Heil Hitler”), racist memes, the number 18 (code for “Adolf Hitler”), and the Hagal rune. Developers flagged the symbols for bosses to remove, but changes were not as swift as they hoped. In one instance, developers asked to remove an image of a particular racist meme, but it reportedly remained present, albeit displayed less prominently. While developers acknowledged that adding numbers could be a simple mistake, it was difficult to believe it was coincidental next to the other symbols.
After enough hate speech reports, CEO Mark Lyons finally addressed the issue in a message to employees on Slack. Deck Nine hired Investigations Law Group to investigate the issue, but employees haven’t been informed about the details of the investigation or the results. Lyons also announced that the company would be implementing an anti-hate-speech policy and mandatory training. Current employees claim that these haven’t gone into action yet.
Life is Strange has a reputation for representing queer and otherwise marginalized individuals. Nazism, typically seen as a guise of white supremacy, also discriminates against people of color and LGBTQA+ individuals, so the inclusion of hateful symbols in development seemed particularly inappropriate to developers.
“To put that in this game in particular feels targeted,” one developer told IGN. “It feels like a way to say, ‘You don’t get to have this either.’…It’s not a little thing. If you meant it as a joke, it doesn’t matter. It reads the same.”
Deck Nine issued a lengthy response to many of the allegations in the full report. Among other things, it stated, “We will soon be integrating new tools into our development pipeline to ensure all terms, imagery, or symbols created in our games – including any and all background content – receive additional vetting for potentially offensive or hateful expressions and are properly flagged and assessed to avoid inadvertent inclusion. We are also rolling out formal anti-hate speech training and processes to better inform and give team members actionable resources to remain vigilant as a collective studio.”