Apex Legends lead game designer Daniel Klein was fired from developer Respawn Entertainment on Friday, August 6th, 2021 due to previous racist and sexist statements.
Who is Daniel Klein? Klein comes from Europey and is known, among other things, for his work as a champion and system designer for League of Legends at Riot Games. In early 2020 he moved to Respawn Entertainment and became lead game designer for Apex Legends.
What happened? Dived at the end of July 2021 Screenshots of blog posts and public conversations in which Daniel Klein made derogatory comments about women and people of African origin. The excerpts come from conversations and blog posts from 2007.
Klein confirmed the authenticity of the screenshots and apologized in a tweet for his behavior at the time. He is sad and angry at his former self and makes it clear that he no longer believes in the things he wrote back then:
Link to Twitter content
What followed? Although the remarks are already 14 years old, Klein himself shared his dismissal at Respawn Entertainment on August 10 on twitter with:
“I stopped working for Respawn last Friday. I want to be transparent and say that I’m heartbroken and depressed. It’s been a dark couple of days. You may have seen the narrow-minded things I said in 2007. I agree wholeheartedly to the fact that THIS guy should be fired.
I’ve put so much energy into becoming a better person since then. But right now I’m very depressed because it feels like I can never make amends for what I did then. ”
Klein therefore does not agree with the decision of his dismissal, but accepts it:
Link to Twitter content
What does the community say about the layoff? The responses to his dismissal are very twofold. Both on Twitter as well as on Reddit there is both understanding and disbelief about the reason for dismissal.
Klein has been the focus of the community before because he made some controversial comments about balancing decisions in Apex Legends and League of Legends. Some community members describe him as “a pretty disagreeable person.”
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