Spiritfarer developers apologise for ableist writing found in their game

Developer Thunder Lotus has apologised after coming under fire for the ableist writing of one of Spiritfarer’s disabled characters and pledged to fix the moment in question and “correct the lack of senstivity” to the disabled community in the future.

In the apology, which the studio posted to their website as well as on Twitter, saw Thunder Lotus fully admitting cuplability for the ill-judged moment which saw a disabled character heavily imply that their death would be preferable to living in a wheelchair; “We understand that we unwittingly perpetuated ideas and language that have traditionally been used to exclude and discriminate against people with disabilities, while reinforcing ableist views of what they should find empowering,” they said. “This directly undermines the empathetic spirit that we wished to infuse into every aspect of the game, and we regret this failure.”

“We therefore choose to take this as a necessary opportunity to grow our collective perspectives, and to use that wisdom to correct the mistake. The Spiritfarer narrative team pledges to reexamine their work for this or any similar/parallel perspectives or words that run counter to the inclusive values that we’ve built our company around, and correct this as warranted.”

Spiritfarer is out now on PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch and Google Stadia. You can find out our review of the game here (Note that Imogen did not come across the content referred to in this news piece during her time with the game for the review.)