HomeNewsLife Is Strange: True Colors
Life is Strange devs Deck Nine accused of crunch, sexism and abusive behaviour amid allegedly toxic cultureNazi references and racist memes reportedly found in upcoming game left unaddressed for months
Nazi references and racist memes reportedly found in upcoming game left unaddressed for months
To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Manage cookie settings
To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Manage cookie settings
Particular issues were claimed to occur among the narrative team, with narrative director and later studio chief creative officer Zak Garriss singled out for particular criticism. Garriss’ alleged behaviour reportedly included attempts to form inappropriate relationships with female members of staff - using his senior position to ‘cross personal boundaries’ - describing Black Lives Matter as a “hate group” and asking writers to express their political leanings during a meeting, and introducing various problematic elements to True Colors’ script, including an insensitive depiction of migrant workers - removed from the final game - and one scene with traumatic implications of date rape that Garriss reportedly had to fought with for three hours before relenting, albeit with a sexist remark about the friction being related to the game’s female protagonist.
Despite multiple reports made to HR and anonymous feedback provided via the studio’s performance evaluation system, no action was taken against Garriss before he voluntarily left the studio. However, when Garriss was proposed as a contracted consultant on a new game, it reportedly took multiple writers threatening to quit and the studio’s HR department allegedly flagging legal implications of rehiring someone with multiple complaints against them before management passed on his involvement.
Garriss denied and downplayed many of the allegations in a lengthy response to IGN, refuting the claims that he had engaged in “any aberrant or inappropriate behaviour” and putting the stated issues in the narrative team down to “torpor rather than toxicity”.
“In all of my career, I have never worked with writers who were as creatively inflexible, antagonistic toward difference, or less inclined to listen or compromise as a select few of this group,” Garriss said, claiming that the initial work on True Colors before his input was “so poor” that the game was initially under threat of cancellation, requiring him to reduce the “influence” of certain members of the team - something that, according to Garriss, meant “their conduct became unprofessional, more antagonistic, and accusatory toward me of the toxicity that, from the perspective of many people in the studio, was in actuality a result of their behaviour”. (The complete claims against Garriss and his full response to the allegations can be read in the IGN article.)
In response to the many allegations, Deck Nine issued a lengthy statement that isworth reading in full over in the complete article. Among other things, the statement claims that Deck Nine are “constantly working to build in better practices throughout development to avoid crunch”, introducing formal anti-hate speech training and processes, alongside additional vetting processes, and states that “we have always conducted thorough internal investigations if any issues arise” according to “strict” conduct policies: “as soon as allegations or issues are reported to HR, they are confidentially investigated, assessed, and addressed with the parties involved as quickly and effectively as possible”.
