World of Warships is once again the center of controversy. Last week, the free-to-play naval warfare game was criticized for its increasing use of loot box-style mechanics to monetize its summer event, leading dozens of streamers to abandon World of Warships' Community Contributor program.
Now we're finding out that one of the few streamers that didn't abandon the program was kicked for being critical of the developers. And on top of that, someone within Wargaming even sent a personalized "f--- you" to said streamer in the form of a promo code.
The streamer in question is Turry, a Russian player who's recently criticized Wargaming for not playing their own game. In 2020, less than 300 matches were played by all Wargaming developers combined, a message that didn't sit well with Wargaming.
Besides kicking Turry out of the Community Contributor program, one dev went even further by releasing a promo code that included a personal slight to Turry. The code "W0LAXU5FKUTURY5" was released on a Russian stream providing players with bonus content, but English-speaking viewers noted that "FKUTURY" seemed like a message directed at Turry.
It could have gone down as a coincidence, but to wargaming's credit, they owned up to the promo code and issued a full apology over on the World of Warships forums.
"As you know, last Friday a bonus code with offensive content was distributed on our official stream, insulting our player and the popular streamer Turry," reads the post (as translated by PC Gamer). "This is unacceptable. We conducted an internal audit and found that this situation occurred due to the actions of a certain employee. The employee was suspended from this job and the most stringent measures were applied to him according to the results of the audit."
Not only did Wargaming apologize on the forums, it also issued another apology in the form of another promo code. "TURRYWEARESORRY" will get World of Warships players 1500 community tokens to use on purchasing loot for your boats.
As for Turry, he told PC Gamer that the apology went a long way to quelling his initial outrage, but that apology did not include an invitation back into the Community Contributor program.