It’s been a rough week for Techland, developers of just-launched Dead Island.

Launch reviews of the game have been mostly pretty underwhelming, and then there was a bit of a fiasco when the company accidentally released a console build version of Dead Island onto Steam.

Now somebody over on the Steam forums has turned up a line of code in the game naming a female character skill that does +15% damage to male enemies “feminist whore”.

The name was apparently changed at some point during the game’s development, although references remain in the code.

“It obviously violates professional and ethical standards at Techland and should never have happened,” Blazej Krakowiak, international brand manager, told Eurogamer.”We’re investigating this right now and we’ll issue a statement later.”

“For now, I can only express my sincerest apologies for this incident and assure you that whoever acted so irresponsibly did not represent the views and opinions of Techland,” he continued.

“I’m equally sure that aside from the author of that unfortunate line of code, everyone at the office is as disturbed by this as you are.”

Of course, most people are passing it off as a ‘LITTLE JOKE, HAHA’ – and predictably (if ironically) enough, the response demonstrates exactly why ‘LITTLE JOKES, HAHA’ like this are a problem.

“I don’t think anyone really gives a **** if it offends someone. It’s just a little joke hidden in the game’s files. It’s not a T-rated game by any means, and feminists are *****es anyway. Cry more,” writes Metal_Izanagi, presumably on a short break from his PhD thesis: ‘Why The 1950s Were Better.’

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