IGN Offers Official Apology After French Branch Insults ‘Stellar Blade’ Director For Choosing To Create Attractive Female Protagonist
Spencer Baculi
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In an admittedly surprising admission of wrongdoing from an industry known for going out of their way to ever avoid doing so, IGN has offered an official company apology to Stellar Blade director and Shift Up CEO Hyung-Tae Kim after their French branch chose to insult him over his decision to portray his game’s protagonist, Eve, with a sexually attractive design.
As previously reported, in his preview of the game for IGN France, outlet contributor Ben Ossola chose to dedicate a not-insignificant portion of his word count to dismissing Kim’s artistic vision as nothing more than the creepy fantasies of a sex-less weirdo.
“The design of the game, in particular its character, highlights an obvious bias,” wrote Ossola, per an English translation of his piece provided by this article’s author. “‘We’re going to beat up the alien, but if we can do it while pleasuring the eyes of the men, that’s a bonus.'”
“And the result doesn’t really work,” he continued. “It’s not new, and other games have made the choice to highlight the assets of their female characters, but where Bayonetta bears an iconic character design, or 2B from NieR: Automata, inspired an entire generation of cosplayers, Stellar Blade’s Eve is just boring. A doll sexualized by someone who has never seen a woman.”
After being presented with evidence contrary to this accusation – specifically the twin facts that Kim is married to fellow Shift Up concept artist Jiyun Chae and that Eve’s full appearance is based on a 1:1 body scan of real-world Korean model Shin Jae-eun – rather offer a retraction or correction, the outlet would instead attempt to defend their lack of journalistic integrity by blaming the public for having ‘misread’ Ossola’s original words.
Changing their insulting description of Eve from “A doll sexualized by someone who has never seen a woman” to “A doll sexualized by someone you would think has never seen a woman,” Osolla then added the condescending disclaimer, in English, that “This last sentence has been slightly edited for French speaking people pretending not to understand what we meant, and the English speaking mob who Google Translated the initial text.”
Following backlash from French speakers regarding their disingenuous attempt at deflection, IGN France would both remove Ossola’s name from the preview’s byline and update the aforementioned disclaimer to instead claim that, rather than their words being misread, the article was actually edited due to “death threats”.
(It should be noted that neither Osolla nor IGN France provided any proof of having received any such threats.)
Finally, on April 3rd, the head IGN office would step in to put an end to the situation, retracting Ossola’s statement regarding Eve’s appearance as “a doll sexualized by someone who has never seen a woman” and offering a full apology to Kim for the article’s original publication.
“Recently, IGN France produced and published a preview of Stellar Blade containing an offensive passage that should never have been included. The text has now been modified, and here’s our official apology to the staff at Shift Up Corporation,” wrote the outlet. “Also, please note that IGN France is an independent branch of IGN and that IGN’s editorial staff had nothing to do with this incident.”
“The original text of the Stellar Blade preview contained statements that were out of place,” they added. ” While it was never our intention to disrespect either Shift Up or any of its employees or their work, we recognize that the sentence taken in its literal sense was out of place and we regret it.”
Ultimately, IGN concluded, “For anyone at Shift Up Corporation who felt personally targeted and insulted by this passage, we are truly sorry and apologize profusely.”
At current, Stellar Blade is set to cut its way exclusively onto PlayStation 5 consoles on April 26th.
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