Mordhau developers Triternion have issued an official statement to the gender and race-based filter proposed in an upcoming update.
Earlier this week, Mordhau made headlines for a controversial solution to its problem of toxic gamers. Racism, sexism, and homophobia run rampant in-game and in Mordhau’s forums, which developer Triternion seems unable to stop.
The game released with an eye towards “authenticity” as a medieval Europe battle simulator. Only white, male characters can be created to take part in Mordhau’s 64-player bloodbaths. However, an upcoming update is set to solve that problem by adding female characters and different skin tones.
Unfortunately, this angered a certain segment of Mordhau’s player base which bemoaned the move away from historical accuracy in the name of diversity. One such solution discussed by two animators in an interview with PC Gamer was to include a filter that would replace female and non-white player characters with white male ones as currently found in Mordhau.
The solution was immediately decried as pandering to racists within Mordhau’s player base. The controversy grew such that Triternion issued a statement on their Twitter account saying that no such filter exists and that a larger statement would be forthcoming.
Yesterday, Triternion posted their official response on the Mordhau forums. In it, they say that the idea for a gender and race filter was proposed early on as a theoretical solution but was quickly discounted. The two artists interviewed by PC Gamer were “both uninvolved with character development” and “went into a verbal interview with minimal PR experience and ended up answering some of the questions in a misleading way.”
Which is a nice way of saying that they just didn’t get the memo.
“We at Triternion do not, nor have we ever had any plans to implement any kind of ethnicity toggle on potential future character ethnicity customization additions,” writes the studio.
As for accusations of toxic gamer culture flourishing in their game, Triternion admits they just don’t have the manpower to address the issue. The studio is a team of 11 first-time developers working remotely and a smattering of volunteers “who try their best to curb this toxicity and behavior across all platforms, including in-game.”
Triternion says the plan to improve “in this regard,” but that they are currently focused on major content additions “and unfortunately we do not have the staff nor systems in-place to moderate everything to our intended level of standards.”
No timeframe was set for when the next update would drop or when expanded moderating systems would be implemented in Mordhau. Perhaps most tellingly, many of the responses to Triternion’s statement seemed upset that a race/gender filter would not be implemented.
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