An admin on the official Discord servers for Kinetic Games Hugely popular indie horror game phasmophobia was recently removed after a Twitter user publicly condemned the studio for failing to protect its community from sexual harassment and racism.
Last week Twitter user @CrownedCollider posted a thread in which they alleged problematic behavior from one of the phasmophobia‘s Discord admins, “Charcoal Salamander”. The allegations, which are backed up with Discord screenshot receipts, concern inappropriately shared files and overt racist behavior. While the developer’s main artist, CJ, initially reacted skeptically
my box has reached out to Kinetic Games for comment.
According to Kinetic Games’ statement, on January 25 this year, Charcoal Salamander was accused of sexual harassment, specifically by sharing nude photos and raising several “online” topics. At the time, Kinetic Games was pleased with Charcoal Salamander’s response and believed the images had been publicly shared elsewhere on Discord.
@CrownedCoIIder’s first reputation tweet last week was dismissed by Kinetic Games Lead Artist CJ via Twitter DMs. In shared screenshots of the conversation, CJ contradicted the nature of sharing nude pictures, dismissing it as essentially boys and claiming that that alone was not a criminal offense.
A day later, @CrowdCoIIder shared videos of a private conversation with Charcoal Salamander, in which the former Discord admin makes racist comments. CJ then apologized and implied that her denial of the inappropriateness of what is arguably revenge porn was taken out of context.
According to their statements, the artist CJ promised “not to let a situation like this happen again” and Kinetic Games said that it “will get better”.