Renowned game designer David Jaffe (Twisted Metal, God of War, Drawn to Death) revealed to have turned down an offer to direct a $100 million game project in development at Tencent, and he did so because of his views on China's government.
Jaffe talked about this in the latest episode of the Sacred Symbols+ podcast, hosted by Colin Moriarty. The podcast is paywalled (you need to subscribe to the Last Stand Media Patreon to get access), but VideoGamesChronicle reported the relevant statements made by David Jaffe.
I had a $100 million deal. I was courted by a Chinese company… and I said ‘no thank you’… because you’re Tencent and I want nothing to do with you.
It was bad because it was the western Tencent, and it was a western guy that I respect that was calling me and I wasn’t trying to shame the guy. I hope he’s got thick enough skin, and he’s been an executive in the business way longer than I have, but I was just like ‘man, I don’t want to do business with a company like that, with a government like that.'
Stop killing people. Again, people will be like, ‘America’s hands aren’t clean’, no they are not clean at all but we’re also not, you know, we all have a system that if we actually gave a shit, we could change it.
In China, you just get picked up off the street if you go online and say something bad about the police or the government or anything and who knows when they’ll see you again. That’s not even mentioning if you’re a fucking Uyghur.
After the story started making rounds, David Jaffe also tweeted a block of text that supposedly included his reply to the aforementioned Tencent executive. It's pretty much impossible to verify its veracity, though.
Being accused of making up the tencent thing. Man, I am so sorry some of you guys have been so harmed by the media (I get it) that you don't know who to trust. But love, like, or hate me, I don't lie. And I always save the receipts: pic.twitter.com/6e9XLyeTIE
— David Jaffe (@davidscottjaffe) April 19, 2022
About a year ago, David Jaffe joined the Polish game company Movie Games as a consultant and supervisor on the board. The original announcement even said Movie Games might finance Jaffe's new projects, though that part doesn't appear to have materialized yet.
As for Tencent, the Chinese corporation continues to acquire majority or minority stakes in an increasing number of Western companies. In the last six months alone, they made investments in 1C Entertainment, Inflexion Games, Remedy, Turtle Rock Studios, Playtonic, and Wake Up Interactive.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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