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Over the weekend, Tripwire Interactive president John Gibson tweeted out that he is in favor of the new six-week abortion ban in Texas and that he was "Proud of the #USSupremeCourt" for giving the okay for that ban to be in place. Gibson continued on to say, "As an entertainer I don't get political often. Yet with so many vocal peers on the other side of this issue, I felt it was important to go on the record as a pro-life game developer."
The new law in Texas effectively bans abortions after six weeks. This time is simply far too short for most people to even know that they are pregnant in the first place. The Texas law also allows for citizens to sue abortion providers that break the ban. Citizens are also being urged to sue anybody that aids or abets in an abortion. If the lawsuit is successful, the person bringing up the lawsuit can earn a "bounty" of $10,000 (USD).
The response to Gibson's Twitter post has been overwhelmingly negative, with very few exceptions. A lot of the responses denouncing Gibson's remarks have come from some of his peers in the gaming industry.
Sony Santa Monica writer Alanah Pearce asked if Gibson "had a vasectomy before tweeting this?" Gears of War creator Cliff Bleszinski told Gibson, "you can now unfollow me now, thanks." Cory Barlog of Sony Santa Monica and the director for God of War asked, "how can anyone be proud of claiming dominion over a woman's personal freedoms?" Author, screenwriter, and game designer Gary Whitta says that this is "the last time I ever consider playing any of your games."
Gibson's remarks have already started to cost Tripwire Interactive some business. One of the responses to Gibson's comment comes from Shipwright Studios. Shipwright Studios is a game development studio that helped Tripwire for the past three years on titles such as Chivalry II and Maneater. The studio issued a statement saying that they "cannot in good conscience continue to work with Tripwire under the current leadership structure."
Just a quick update to add that Torn Banner Studios, the main development team behind Chivalry 2, have also expressed their disgust with the statements made by John Gibson. As it currently stands, Torn Banner has made no statement about whether or not they will continue to work with Tripwire going forward.
However, I don't care if anybody sees that post I made that outlined John's past shitty behavior: https://www.resetera.com/threads/joh.../post-72727387
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This doesn't surprise me.
I used to be a mod for Tripwire forums some years ago and I did some non-paid testing for some of their games over the years. I know a few people at the company because of this. John and I were "friends" on Facebook up until about the 2016 election.
I come bearing receipts of him being a piece of shit for ages now. I had made a Facebook post calling out anybody that willingly voted for Trump. I said, in short, that those who voted for him "set progress and America as a whole back by a factor of decades, if not more." Included in the post were links to shit that any sane person would look at and think "how the hell could we elect this person?" But no, not for John or people like him.
This was on November 9, 2016. This entire post is public on my Facebook page. It was always public from the start.
John's initial reply to my post and the follow-ups.
Here is where John admits to unbanning a repeatedly excessive racist time and time again. He "tried to be kind" to someone that broke the rules on the TWI forums to warrant a ban about a dozen or so times, each time being unbanned by undisclosed higher-ups. Some time prior to this I had already stepped down as a moderator on the forums precisely because that user was constantly getting unbanned by "undisclosed higher-ups" and completely undermining the job we were doing as mods.
And now a great part. John says he can't be racist because the pastor of his church is "an African American!" Oh, also his daughters had crushes on "African American boys."
His last two replies on the post are here where he justifies unbanning the repeat racist offender "Mike." He then doubles down on the whole racism thing by saying he "knows many racists" (I'm sure he does) and that they would "never go to a church with an African American pastor."
I did not reply to him anymore after that. In fact I believe I removed him as a friend on Facebook afterwards.
So sure, it's not quite the same topic at hand here. We weren't talking about abortions, but John's true colors were pretty obvious even back then.
Fuck you, John. You were a piece of shit then and you're a piece of shit now. The only people I feel sorry for in all of this are the employees that will now have to deal with the fallout from your continued stupid bullshit.