Night In The Woods "cuts ties" with his co-creator following allegations of abuse



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Two creators of Night In The Woods have announced their intention to "sever ties with Alec Holowka, the third co-creator, following allegations of abusive behavior and sexual assault against him this week. "We take these accusations seriously as a team," said Scott Benson and Bethany Hockenberry in a statement on Wednesday. They have now canceled an unknown "project in progress" and postpone the planned physical exit of NITW.

"This week, past allegations of abuse were revealed about Alec Holowka, coder, composer and co-designer of Night In The Woods. We take these allegations seriously as a team. As a result and after scary reflections, we cut links with Alec, "said the official Twitter account of the game in a statement. multi-tweet declaration.

They say the NITW boxed output from Limited Run Games is being postponed, while the iOS version "is run by an outside company and overseen by [publishers] Finji and will remain in development. Beyond that, they do not know.

"In the future, Bethany and I will be in charge of Night In The Woods," Benson wrote. "We do not know yet what it means. This thing takes time. "

Both already founded a new studioGlory Society, with Wren Farren – and without Alec Holowka – in March.

Night In The Woods is a story of growing up in adulthood in a rural Pennsylvania town, funny, hot, bittersweet and tragic. In addition, all people are animals. And there is a knife fight purely for the amusements, for which I am always leaving. We called it one of the best PC games of 2017 and we had a critical review too. It's a lot to me, a real mammal.

Benson also tried to provide context to players who could now guess their relationship with the game. He explains that he was "the artist, the main animator, the co-designer, the co-designer, author and the guy who wrote almost all this dialogue in the game ", while Hockenberry was" the co-author and the researcher ". While Holowka played a huge role in the game, many of his stories are of these two.

"Much of Night In The Woods is drawn directly from our lives. Bethany comes from a small valley in the center of the Palestinian Authority. I live here in western Pennsylvania for about 20 years. The characters are us and the people we have known. The places are the ones we know.

"Thousands of people have connected to Night In The Woods in a very personal way. We can not tell you how to feel about it. Everything you feel is valid. Your experience with the art is yours. What it means to you is yours, regardless of anything else. "

We contacted Alec Holowka for comment this week after the allegations and have not heard from them yet.

Holowka is one of many people in the video game industry this week who is accused of inappropriate and abusive behavior, professionally and personally, mostly by female and non-binary developers. The continuation of the first charge brought by the creator of Tetrageddon Games, Nathalie Lawhead, against the composer Jeremy Soule, reminds me of Hollywood's #metoo movement. While the actors were opening up about abuses in the film industry, allegations that they had kept secret for fear of retaliation, he encouraged even more voices. We must be careful in the way we account for it.

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