Last week, gamers discovered homophobic jokes in the FPS throwback game Ion Fury. This included a homophobic slur found in hidden text, as well as an OLAY shampoo parody bottle that was changed to "OGAY." In response to backlash for the jokes and for potentially transphobic comments made by some of the developers on Discord, developer Voidpoint and 3D Realms announced that the offensive jokes in Ion Fury would be patched out, $10,000 of Ion Fury's profits would be donated to The Trevor Project (an organization that promotes suicide prevention for LGBTQ youths), and the developers would undergo sensitivity training. However, it's now been announced through a joint statement by Voidpoint and 3D Realms that Ion Fury will not be patching out the homophobic jokes.
"We will absolutely NOT be censoring Ion Fury or any of our other games, now or in the future, including but not limited to by removing gags such as gaming's most controversial facial wash," the joint statement from Voidpoint and 3D Realms reads. "We do not support censorship of creative works of any kind and regret our initial decision to alter a sprite in the game instead of trusting our instincts. 3D Realms and Voidpoint stand together on this matter."
This is quite the reversal from the Ion Fury developers, and it remains to be seen if they will still be undergoing sensitivity training and if $10,000 will still be donated to The Trevor Project as previously promised.
When it was initially announced that Ion Fury would be patching out the homophobic jokes, it resulted in mixed reactions. There were those who were in favor of seeing the potentially offensive content removed, but there were also those who felt that it removing the jokes was a form of censorship. Some members of the Ion Fury development team also appeared to be against removing the jokes, as the game's Twitter page actually told fans to pirate Ion Fury instead of buying it in protest of the changes.
It seems as though the Ion Fury controversy is far from over. However, the game's developers should be used to controversy by now. Before the uproar over the homophobic jokes, Ion Fury was sued by the rock band Iron Maiden because of its original title, Ion Maiden.
Ion Fury is out now for PC, with a release planned for PS4, Switch, and Xbox One later this year.