Several Employees From Developers Such As Bethesda, Epic Games, And Sucker Punch Accused Of Not Only Celebrating Charlie Kirk’s Assassination But Also Encouraging Violence
A shocking number of those who could be deemed politically left have been celebrating the assassination of Charlie Kirk, encouraging more violence against anyone they deem politically right (or supporting ‘fascism’), and dismissal of those wishing to mourn the conservative activist. This led to those revolted to call their employers, warning them of who was in their midst. This resulted in those employees being terminated, becoming a campaign for those disgusted by the continued threats and derision from ‘the left.’
This also extends to the video game industry; including Bethesda, Epic Games, Sucker Punch Productions, and more.
We must emphasize that allegations made without hard evidence — the original message being viewable or archives of it- will not be featured in this article. We nonetheless note there have been claims of individuals deleting either their messages or accounts, relying on social media platforms where archiving websites are blocked or are inconsistent, or making their accounts private.
The outrage hasn’t prevented users on social media platforms from sharing screenshots of the alleged offenses, nor the forming of “CharlieTweetsDetected” — a Steam Curator list warning users of games where a developer involved with them had made a call to violence, celebrated Kirk’s assassination, or failed to outright condemn the former.
The group also features a list of developers who condemned the above. At this time of writing, the group has over twenty thousand followers. In a lengthy tweet on X, the Curator’s creator compared said employees to “Jack Thompson level PR problems,” pointing out how self-regulation (much like age-ratings) solved many criticisms by politicians and activists in the ’90s.
To begin with a more solid case, Bethesda — or rather, an employee with access to their X account — posted a veiled message supporting the assassination. Archives show what appears to be a video from Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, with the message “Good Kitty.”
Now deleted, others claimed the video showed the player — Dr. Jones himself — petting a cat and saying, “You don’t care much about these fascists do you?“
While accurate to the character, time period, and game’s story; this post was made four days after Kirk’s assassination by alleged shooter Tyler Robinson. Reports claim a casing from one of the alleged shooter’s unfired bullets had written upon it “Hey fascist, catch!“
Those in support of Kirk have also proposed that rhetoric against the right — by the left and mainstream media — led to the assassination.
At this time of writing Bethesda has made no comment, despite X users continuing to highlight the offending tweet in reply to there other messages. Similar messages have appeared under tweets by their parent company Xbox.
Microsoft had aready issued an apology before Bethesda’s offending tweet, in relation to comments made by other Microsoft employees, declaring, “We’re aware of the views expressed by a small subset of our employees regarding recent events.”
“We take matters like this very seriously and we are currently reviewing each individual situation. Comments celebrating violence against anyone are unacceptable and do not align with our values,” Microsoft insisted.
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Another high-profile, though more complicated, case comes from Tim Sweeney; founder of Epic Games (Fortnite, the Epic Games Store) and creator of the Unreal Engine.
Clemson University announced they “unequivocally condemns any and all expressions that endorse, glorify or celebrate political violence,” while still standing with the principles of the U.S. Constitution as “that right does not extend to speech that incites harm or undermines the dignity of others.”
Replied to this post, Sweeney said, “What amendment says you can’t diss someone? Not seeing it here.” He then cited the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
It appears Sweeney had forgotten the numerous exceptions to the First Amendment: incitement, false statements of fact, “fighting words,” obscenity, the Smith Act, threats to the President of the US and their successors, commercial speech, intellectual property rights, and more. At this time of writing, neither Sweeney nor Epic Games have issued a statement.
Despite Thomas Berry (Director for the Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies) highlighting the difference between free speech protecting speech that “undermines the dignity of others” and not incitement, Sweeney continued to argue, “My tweet isn’t some veiled partisan political commentary. Clemson’s statement is simply wrong about the constitution, and a public university should know better.”
“The constitution, and the right to vigorously criticize, is supposed to be the constant through these times,” Sweeney defended.
Sweeney continued to showcase other times he defended free speech, seemingly ignoring Clemson condemning comments that incited.
Yet another incident that caught attention came from Drew Harrison, then Sucker Punch Productions’ Senior Staff Character Lookdev & Texture Artist. She had worked at the company for over ten years, until she posted a crass joke on Bluesky: “I hope the shooter’s name is Mario so that Luigi knows his bro got his back.”
This would be in reference to Luigi Mangione, who assassinated UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December last year.
Based on a report by the Associated Press, Kirk was declared dead around 8:47 p.m. UTC. Archives show Harrison’s message was at 10:36 p.m on the same day, though we cannot be sure of the timezone Bluesky displays when archived; PT being seven hours behind UTC, while ET is four hours behind.
An archive of Harrison’s Bluesky profile shows she realized X had “noticed” her and dismissed her own joke, before stating, “Maybe instead of emailing people’s employers y’all should be emailing your reps & demand gun control immediately.”
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Harrison later showed a screenshot of her phone showing multiple calls from unknown IDs nigh-constantly at 1:37 a.m. She was likely suggesting she was doxxed, and also claimed she had slept through the spam calls.
On September 11th, Harrison claimed she had been fired. “If standing up against fascism is what cost me my dream job I held for 10 years, I would do it again 100x stronger,” Harrison defied.
Around that time of writing, Harrison changed her profile name to “drew punching Nazis till I die.”
Harrison was quick to defend Sucker Punch however, describing them as “amazing & one of the last few bright shining lights in the game industry. I still support them and I cannot condone any animosity directed at them. It’s truly all the best people.”
Based on archives of who liked the message, we can see what appears to be other game developers and producers who arguably approved of Harrison’s joke. At this time or writing, several of these accounts are either closed or have removed where they work from their bios.
In cases where their likes are now removed, this could indicate remorse, rather than just ‘covering their tracks.’
These include Kelly Snyder (Sucker Punch, Senior Producer), Lee Cash (The Coalition, Senior Producer), Xib Vaine (Wizards of the Coast, Technical Game Producer), Dennis Yelito (Bungie, Associate Producer), Chris Vasquez (That’s No Moon, Senior Material Artist), Bruce Knapik (Epic Games, Senior Trust & Safety Investigations Manager), and Ben Books Schwartz (Studio Drydock, Senior Narrative Systems Designer).
In gaming-adjacent industries, there’s Lisy Kane (WINGS Interactive PC & Console Selection Committee, Girl Geek Academy Co-Founder, IGDA Foundation Board Member) and Luther Minshull (caster for Counter-Strike and Valorant).
Kotaku‘s Ethan Gach reported that Harrison had been fired after a “right-wing pressure campaign,” blaming Mark Kern (former Blizzard Entertainment producer) for sharing the screenshot,and calling for a boycott of Ghost of Yōtei.
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Gach also claimed this was part of a “Gamergate 2.0” movement against DEI in the video games industry, and the backlash as some felt the female samurai main character Atsu was anachronistic and indicative of such measures.
A Sony Interactive Entertainment spokesperson told Kotaku “Drew Harrison is no longer an employee of Sucker Punch Productions.” Sucker Punch Head Brian Fleming has since addressed the situation, confirming Harrison has been fired.
“Drew’s no longer an employee here,” Fleming confirmed. “I think we’re aligned as a studio that celebrating or making light of someone’s murder is a deal-breaker for us, and we condemn that, kind of in no uncertain terms. That’s sort of our studio, and that’s kind of where we are.”
Kern claims the latest trailer for Ghost of Yōtei didn’t appear on X under Sony’s official account until “hours” after it had appeared on YouTube.
Using third party plugins, the Like:Dislike ratio at this time of writing is 3:7 (15,000 likes and 35,000 dislikes from 281,000 views). While comments on YouTube and X are filled with support for Kirk, scorn for the studios, and mockery over the game being beset by more controversy.
Troy Goodfellow, PR Manager of Historical Grand Strategy at Paradox Interactive is another figure who forgot the value of good PR.
Goodfellow sent a message despairing another person was acting decent. “Broadway performer and one-time fav Kristin Chenoweth commented on Instagram that she thinks Kirk is in heaven and, even though, she didn’t agree with him all the time, she appreciated some of his ‘perspectives’.”
“A career built on queer money, and coming out like this. Folks losing their minds,” Goodfellow mused.
An archive Goodfellow’s Bluesky page shows retweeting users disparaging a tribute to Kirk at Yankee Stadium, claimed Kirk’s work was about “hate and emboldening violent people,” and that the BBC only covered the story due to the volume of people discussing it on X.
Ville Kallio, CEO of Consumer Softproducts, decided two days after Kirk’s assassination was the perfect time to share a fan-made Cruelty Squad map that re-creates the assassination. Bizarrely, the accompanying YouTube video for “Utahnasia” features a tab to donate to Turning Point USA.
It should be noted while Cruelty Squad is about assassination, its setting in the official game isn’t realistic — taking place in a future dystopia and with visuals that border on psychedelic.
When a Bluesky user highlighted how Kallio’s comments had gained infamy on X, Kallio sarcastically replied, “oh my god this guy and his friends are all going to come together.”
Kallio even claimed, “good news, i made a bit of money from the fake cruelty squad outrage. these people need to understand they’re like 0.1% of the population.”
Currently there has been no further statement from Kallio or Consumer Softproducts.
One of the more direct insults came from the official X account for Caravan SandWitch, which posted, “One year since the release of Caravan SandWitch!! Also a fascist got 360 noscope. What a week!”
They would go on to insist the vile comments were indicative of their true nature (which they had never tried to hide), and approved of others pirating the game due to their comments.
In recent years the account has reposted promotional posts from other indie games and their fan art. There has been no statement from publisher Dear Villagers, who instead did a Steam giveaway for Caravan SandWitch, mere minutes after the game’s X account made those comments.
Developer Studio Plane Toast has no X account, beyond the aforementioned @SandWitchDev.
Despite these comments coming from ideology — or at least against other ideologies — there are still those blaming video games for violence. As highlighted by our own Cider and Nerdigans on the Bounding Into Comics Zero One podcast, the US Oversight Committee has invited CEOs for Discord, Steam, Twitch and Reddit to testify on “the radicalization of online forum users.”
Likewise, journalist and attorney Geraldo Rivera claimed Robinson was probably “motivated more by Halo and similar fantasy role-play than by substantive political discord.” Rivera would later get a community note for erroneously believing the game was about “Grunts vs. Elites.”
Comments made by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that the National Institutes of Health was examining potential correlation between violent video games — along with drugs and social media — had been cited by other reports. However, this came the day before Kirk’s assassination.
Nonetheless; the theory that video games cause real life violence has been debunked in studies from 2020 — one being a self-declared “definitive” study from Oxford University — two in 2019, 2017, another two from 2016, 2015, and 2008. A study published in 2024 also asserted video games “improved mental well-being.”
As for a negative impact “the empirical evidence supporting this notion is largely based on correlational studies.”
Meanwhile, the comments seen celebrating the death of Charlie Kirk appear to be born primarily from wishing harm upon those supporting specific ideologies, even those who have that claim projected onto them by others.
