In recent years, many people have begun to realize (sometimes too late) that it’s better to keep opinions on polarizing subjects off of social media. In the case of somewhat public figures who represent highly visible companies, this axiom is particularly true. John Gibson, former CEO of Tripwire Interactive, learned that lesson the hard way on September 6.
Tripwire Interactive is a Georgia-based video game developer and publisher best known for the 2009 cooperative first-person shooter Killing Floor and its sequel. On May 19, the governor of Texas signed Senate Bill 8 (SB 8) into law, a controversial abortion bill that has already been appealed to the United States Supreme Court, which sent it back to the Texas courts on September 1. A few days later, John Gibson used his personal Twitter account to state that he felt it was “important to go on the record as a pro-life game developer.”
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Inevitably, there was immediate backlash to Gibson’s Twitter post, as other game companies and the general public expressed outrage at his opinion. On September 6, Tripwire released a press release announcing the immediate resignation of Gibson and the appointment of an interim CEO, Alan Wilson. A co-founder and the current vice president of Tripwire, Alan Wilson has years of experience leading both the business and game development sides of the studio. The company wrote: “The comments given by John Gibson are of his own opinion and do not reflect those of Tripwire Interactive as a company.”
In the wake of Gibson’s Twitter post, one game developer canceled its contracts with Tripwire Interactive. Shipwright is a studio that offers co-development services to other game companies and assisted in the development of Chivalry 2 and Tripwire’s own action RPG Maneater. Shipwright posted a direct response to Gibson’s tweet, stating, “While your politics are your own, the moment you make them a matter of public discourse you entangle all of those working for and with you... We cannot in good conscience continue to work with Tripwire under the current leadership structure.”
Torn Banner Studios is the developer behind 2012’s Chivalry: Medieval Warfare. The game’s sequel, which was released in June 2021, was published by Tripwire. Torn Banner released a statement about Gibson's comments: “This perspective is not shared by our team, nor is it reflected in the games we create. The statement stands in opposition to what we believe about women’s rights.” Now that John Gibson has stepped down as CEO of Tripwire, it is unclear whether Torn Banner and Shipwright will reinitiate their relationships with the company.
Game developers were not the only entities to take steps to distance themselves from Tripwire after Gibson’s Twitter post. A popular content creator on Twitch and YouTube, Ben ‘Cohh Carnage’ Cassell announced that he would no longer support Tripwire’s games. Cohh Carnage has over 1.4 million followers on Twitch and 300,000 on YouTube, so his stance will likely cause others to distance themselves from the company as well. Unfortunately, this means punishing the games’ developers and not necessarily the publisher, which directly supports Shipwright’s stance that Gibson’s words can reflect negatively on every company or person affiliated with Tripwire Interactive.
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Source: Tripwire Interactive, Twitter (1) (2)