Skip to main content

Long read: The beauty and drama of video games and their clouds

"It's a little bit hard to work out without knowing the altitude of that dragon..."

If you click on a link and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. Read our editorial policy.

Techland reflects on Dead Island blooper

Feminist Whore programmer's "private joke".

Dead Island developer Techland has reflected, following an internal investigation, on the embarrassing "Feminist Whore" blooper.

"The person responsible for this unfortunate situation will face professional consequences for violating the professional standards and beliefs Techland stands for," the company declared.

The rest of statement is all humble pie, apologising for the "inexcusably overlooked" and incriminating line of old game code.

"It has come to our attention that one of Dead Island's leftover debug files contains a highly inappropriate internal script name of one of the character skills. This has been inexcusably overlooked and released with the game," the company stated.

"The line in question was something a programmer considered a private joke.

"The skill naturally has a completely different in-game name and the script reference was also changed. What is left is a part of an obscure debug function. This is merely an explanation but by no means an excuse.

"In the end that code was made a part of the product and signed with our company name," Techland added.

"We deeply regret that fact and we apologise to all our customers or anyone who might have been offended by that inappropriate expression."

The Feminist Whore line of code would never have been found had developer Techland not accidentally released a developer build of Dead Island on Steam.

When the news of the Feminist Whore code broke, Techland told Eurogamer it was "disturbed" by the surprise violation of "professional and ethical" standards.

Europeans will benefit from a hefty day-one Dead Island patch when Steam wakes up later today. This will fix the dodgy developer version and fix numerous bugs. It may also wipe existing character saves due to incompatible game versions.

Techland announced this morning that Dead Island wave-based arena DLC will arrive later this month.