Apex Legends' Lead Designer Laid Off for Blog Entries From 2007
One of the main designers of Apex Legends has been fired. The reason is controversial posts he published fourteen years ago on a blog.
Yesterday we wrote about the sacking of Diablo IV's director. Today we have to inform you about another case of this type. Electronic Arts has fired Daniel Klein, one of the lead designers of Apex Legends. He was at the head of the group responsible for balancing the gameplay in this shooter.
The reason for the publisher's decision were the developer's old comments, which recently came to light. Unusual is how old those posts were - they are from 2007. Back then, Klein published controversial content on his DeviantArt blog, attacking women and making fun of Africans.
It's worth mentioning that it's not the first time when this artist was fired by a big company. Previously, he worked for Riot Games. It is ironic that the studio's reason to fire him at the time was because he went overboard with progressive initiatives. In 2018, Klein publicly defended PAX West's decision to hold a League of Legends tournament, in which only women and non-binary people were allowed to compete. However, Riot Games has internal rules and regulations that prohibit any kind of discrimination on social media, including when it only affects men.
Klein's case is just the latest example of the frequent recent situations where yesterday's posts and statements destroy today's careers. This May, Activision severed its relationship with actor Jeff Leach, who provided the voice of Ghost in Call of Duty. Then came his controversial comments about one of the streamers, for which he was banned by Twitch in 2017.
