It was recently announced that Playonic will remove Jon “Jontron” Jafari’s assortment of Banjo Kazooie-esqe “Echs” with a Day 1 patch of their game, Yooka-Laylee. The decision comes from the recent storm caused by Jon’s ill-fated debate with Twitch streamer Steven “Destiny” Bonnell II. In the stream, Jon was struck with a horrible case of verbal diarrhea, and made a poor account of his views, which has led to many outlets reporting that he is a White Supremecist/Neo Nazi/Unabashed Racist.
I’d prefer to skirt this controversy as best I can. But, from years of viewing, I know Jon isn’t necessarily the best at articulating his thoughts, especially in regards to politics. I also know he needs to be completely plastered to fly. Whereas Destiny, based on a little research, strikes me as being incredibly unpleasant. An impressive feat, as he was a non-entity to me until this mess began.
Long story short, the fledgling studio made the decision to remove Jon’s vocal contributions from their game. Based on politics. And so, if I may, I’d like to make a few points:
1.) This is a huge mistake. Playtonic is a small, independent company. Literally no one would likely have realized or cared that Jon was in the game. Any controversy that arose would’ve been much smaller than that created by the decision to remove him. The overwhelming majority of people patting them on the back now will be ghosts when they launch. Which brings me to…
2.) People don’t play games for the sake of politics. They play to have fun and escape the everyday crappiness of the world. The number of people who are politically pleased by this decision which overlap with Yooka-Laylee’s prospective playerbase is a very small fraction. The majority of its market are, like Jon, fans of Rare’s 3D platformers. And many of them are also fans of Jon, due to shared taste in games.
3.) The smartest thing they could have done was nothing. Which they can still do. A sizeable number of people are clamoring for a refund. Simply not forcing the patch will go a long way towards repairing their brand. Which is something they wouldn’t have to do if they had decided not to do anything about it in the first place.
4.) This was a Sisyphean effort. On Steam, at the least, those that actually care to do so and haven’t taken steps to get a refund, will simply mod him back into the game. Don’t think they won’t; they will. These people love modding things into games. They’ll probably make a mod that is nothing but Ech just to spite them.
Will it still be a good, playable game? Probably, I don’t know, I’m not the one reviewing it for the site. I suppose my point, overall, is that by trying to avoid minor controversy, Playtonic has landed themselves in the middle of a war zone. A war zone that they’re not yet large enough to manage. At the very least, this will hobble any attempts at crowdfunding in the future for them. And if you don’t believe me, recall what happened with Mighty No. 9 and Red Ash?
Like an anime fan on prom night.
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