JonTron Voice Acting Role in A Hat In Time Creates Controversy
Developer and Publisher Gears for Breakfast have recently released their game A Hat In Time an action adventure 3D platformer game which has been in development for nearly 5 years and is now available on PC.
But just after a day of its official release, a new controversy seems to be looming over the game which can make or break it and may affect its future sales.
Polygon has published an article which highlights the role of Jonathan “JonTron” Jafari a popular YouTuber who has over 3 million subscribers and conduct shows over movies and games. but he recently came into the spotlight when he made some controversial remark towards immigrants and so he was denounced as a white supremacist despite being an Iranian immigrant.
Neogaf has also started a thread where the people opinions are divided some says that the devs should remove JonTron role from the game or they won’t buy it and others are saying that boycotting a game for voice acting of a single person is just not right.
The difference in opinion about the game was seen all over the Twitter some people were completely against it.
Really disappointed to see ‘A Hat in Time’ devs commit to using white supremacist JonTron/Jon Jafari as a voice actor for release this week. pic.twitter.com/5m79TKfm9Y
— Hayden Scott-Baron (@docky) October 3, 2017
So I generally don’t make purchasing decisions on “ethical” grounds, but I was on the fence with A Hat In Time and JonTron still being in-
— Everyone’s Onii Chan (@GreyTheTick) October 6, 2017
While some were happy with JonTron’s voice in it.
Good on Hat in Time for keeping JonTron as a voice
— Jess (HalloweenWord) (@JessooDessoo) October 6, 2017
Im glad jontron is in a hat in time
he got taken out of yooka laylee but im glad he’s in a much better game now
— ?SpOo0kY Sly!??? (@SmolSly) October 4, 2017
Polygon questioned the publisher about the issue but they didn’t respond they even asked the Humble Bundle Store on their view about JonTron involvement in the game but the Rep wisely replied with
“we exercise zero creative control on the games we support,”
Due to JonTron controversial statement, he received massive criticism from both public and media and this ultimately lead to him losing his part in Yooka Laylee a game from developer Playtonic Games and publisher Team17.
Looks like once again the same situation may get repeated and JonTron may lose his part in A Hat In Time if the devs or any of the distributors of the game cave into the criticism and backlash of the public.
Well it is quite understandable about why the devs don’t want to remove JonTron role as the game was in development since 2012 and it is quite possible that Jon did the voice acting before the controversial event also the game is made possible by Kickstarter campaign and removing it would mean more loss of money.
Anyways whatever difference the people may have the game is performing quite well it currently has a meta critic score of 79 and has very positive reviews of Steam with a rating of 9/10. A Hat In Time is available on PC via Steam for more information about the game you can visit the official website or the steam store page.