Chucklefish Apologizes for Unintentionally Whitewashing Wargroove Voice Actors

Publisher and game studio Chucklefish issued an apology after unintentionally whitewashing the voice actors in the DLC for their recent title, Wargroove.

Reported by GI.biz's Rebekah Valentine, Chucklefish recently came under fire by the community when they published a tweet on the official Wargroove Twitter, announcing four new characters for the game, with images of their voice actors beside them. And while three of the four characters were people of color, all four voice actors were white. This led to claims of whitewashing and other racial bias.

Last Friday, the development team responded to these claims, apologizing for their actions and explaining that it was the unintentional outcome of trying to be non-bias in their selection process. They explained that they had chosen to use a third party casting company to find voice actors and that all selections made were done blindly. At the time of choosing, they did not know the race of the actors. They based it only on the audio files sent to them.

Regardless, they've apologized and promise to be more mindful of representation in the future. They did not indicate a plan to re-cast these characters, however.

This isn't the first time this year that Chucklefish was in a bad light for professional practices. They were whistleblown in August for exploiting unpaid interns, issuing informal deadlines for major content additions while refusing to pay them.