Alexis Kennedy who worked for Failbetter Games, who created Fallen London and the Sunless Sea has been outed as a rampant abuser and serial harasser of female game devs, among others.

I love Fallen London.  I’ve been playing it off and on since it started.  It’s a fantastic turn-based RPG I’ve gushed over here many times.  I have also backed his game Cultist Simulator, but I guess I won’t be playing that one.

I do feel kind of ok about playing Fallen London still, because Failbetter Games released this statement on their twitter:

We believe and stand with everyone who has come forward to speak out about Alexis Kennedy tonight.

Alexis left Failbetter three years ago. We no longer have any ties with him personally, creatively or financially.

We know that for some of you, Fallen London and Sunless Sea are irredeemably linked with him. It can be heartbreaking to love something as much as people love these games and feel they’re tainted by association.

We fully understand and respect that. This sort of behaviour has no place in our industry, or in any other. We can only say that we strive to be a studio we can be proud of, and that you can be proud to support.

Ok, guys, this is how you apologize for having employed a predator who preyed on people while in your employ.

You support the victims, You cop to having ties with said person, and hopefully explain that you don’t anymore. You state that you get it if people don’t want to engage with your product.  And you say that you are trying to do better.

The only thing that would make this better is if they had outright said, “Yes, we employed him while he did this, and it is unacceptable and we apologize to the people he hurt.”  But considering that this is head and shoulders above what most of the gaming industry has given us, I’m gonna throw them a cookie here.

So, while not an ideal statement, it is a great stride forward.

Like I said, I may continue to play Fallen London.  I go through phases with it.

I know that a lot of games studios confronted with this sort of thing, fuck up with the best of intent.  But guys, you can’t keep doing that.  This, up here, is kind of the minimum you should be doing.

For some of you, looking at your TSR, you should be apologizing to the victims of harassment that you blew off, in particularly those whose information you passed on to their harasser.  *cough* Mike Mearls *cough*

So, the jury is still out as to whether I will keep playing Fallen London.  We’ll see.  But at least they said something that wasn’t a giant pile of bullshit.

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