After two developers of Ion Fury were exposed using derogatory language on the game's Discord server, targeted primarily at the transgender community and women, developer Voidpoint and publisher 3D Realms have both issued statements apologizing for the two developers' behavior. They have also vowed to take on a zero-tolerance policy for hate speech going forward.
Additionally, Voidpoint has pledged to donate $10,000 to The Trevor Project, a nonprofit organization that provides crisis intervention and suicide prevention services to LGBTQI-identifying youth.
Voidpoint's initial response to the immediate criticism was to claim that the screenshots were taken out of context, rather than address the fact that the posts used derogatory terms for vulnerable groups and invoked similarly harmful stereotypes, regardless of their context. Furthermore, later on in the same Resetera thread, user Flapjack21 posted evidence of homophobic slurs within the Ion Fury game itself.
The full statement issued by Voidpoint to Eurogamer acknowledges both the sexist and transphobic language used in the Discord screenshots and the slurs contained within the game, and apologizes to those within the gaming community who took issue with them. In addition to pledging to henceforth implement a zero-tolerance policy for derogatory speech and to donate $10,000 to The Trevor Project, the company has also stated that employees and contractors alike will now undergo mandatory sensitivity training. Voidpoint also confirmed that they will remove the in-game text uncovered in the later forum post.
Additionally, publisher 3D Realms (who also published many Duke Nukem games, which were a major influence on Ion Fury) responded for the first time to the situation in a statement also issued to Eurogamer. They declared that they take pride in empowering marginalized groups, and pledged to implement a new clause in employee contracts allowing the company to terminate working relationships with any contractor who violates their zero-tolerance hate speech policy.
Disciplinary action against the specific developers responsible for using derogatory language in the leaked screenshots, as well as those who implemented the slurs in the final game build, was not mentioned in the statement.