Phasmophobia devs accused of "housing a sex pest" on its Discord server
The admin has since been removed from his role and banned.
Kinetic Games - the indie team behind massive ghost hunting sim Phasmophobia - has been accused of "housing a sex pest" on its official Discord server.
In a series of messages shared on Twitter, Dandy @ 6.2 – who clarifies that they are "not a victim in this" but is "speaking out for a friend who IS a victim who otherwise felt like she had no voice" – posts a number of incriminating messages that intimate that despite reporting him, the alleged "sex pest" known as Charcoal Salamander had yet to be stripped of his "admin" role on the server.
"So who else knew that the Phasmophobia devs are housing a sex pest in their official discord by keeping him admin and refusing to take any claims against him seriously because I sure do now," tweeted Dandy @ 6.2.
"I will not say much about it on behalf of the friend that is STILL dealing with the fallout of it all but I'm gonna actually ask people to please not play Phasmophobia anymore, even with the newest update coming out soon. It's rotten to the core."
The Twitter thread – which kicked off on 28th September - included correspondence with Phasmophobia's lead artust, cjdxn, who appeared reluctant to take action without more evidence. Allegations against the admin Charcoal Salamander include sharing nudes of others in the Discord channel and racist jokes.
Eventually, when the posts went viral and pressure mounted, Charcoal Salamander was stripped of his admin role and banned from the server.
"Recently we received some news about one of our Discord admins regarding sharing sensitive imagery and racist comments. After assessing the evidence we have removed that admin completely from the Discord team and he will not be rejoining," cjdxn later said in a statement posted 1st October.
"However, some of my words were chosen poorly and in haste. So I would like to apologise. As seen in the shared DMs I explicitly say "I don't agree" with said acts, and I do not condone racism or sharing images of any kind. I never have, or will, support the sharing of private pictures, and I'm truly sorry that what I said could have been interpreted differently.
"However, parts of my DMs regarding the matter have been taken out of context and paint a slightly skewed picture of what I was trying to express," they added. "My comment of 'that just looks like two friends in DMs' was not regarding the sharing of images at all, but instead a response to their conversation prior to the offer of sharing the image.
"I can now see how this may have been easily connected and again, my choice of words should have been more sensitive with such a sensitive topic.
"I will not let a situation like this happen in the future and I wholeheartedly apologise for any part I played in this situation."
Kinetic Games recently released an updated development roadmap for its spooky ghost hunting sim Phasmophobia, with the game's custom difficulty feature now set to release this month with plenty more on the way.