Neostream Interactive, the developer of Little Devil Inside, apologized over allegedly racist stereotypes that were spotted in a trailer for the upcoming open-world RPG.
Little Devil Inside, which started life as a Kickstarter project, has already drawn controversy over the design of one type of enemy that players will encounter in the game.
Little Devil Inside was showcased in a trailer at Sony’s The Future of Gaming event, which unveiled the design of the upcoming PlayStation 5 and quite a few of the games that will be released on the next-generation console. The trailer for the RPG showed cartoon-like graphics as a character explored and survived through various environments, interspersed with scenes of an old man going about his daily life.
The allegedly racist enemy design appears at the 0:45 mark of the trailer, when the main character is seen being chased by a group of black or indigenous tribal people.
It is unclear how many complaints Neostream received over the matter. Nevertheless, the developer issued an apology through a Facebook post, and has promised to change the enemy design.
“Racist stereotypes of any kind were absolutely not intended, we were not aware of the stereotypical connotations, and wish to apologize to anyone who may have been offended by the character design,” Neostream wrote in the post. The studio said that it will remove the enemy character’s dreadlocks, change the lips and skin tone, and make adjustments to the dart blower weapon.
Neostream said that if the planned adjustments were not suitable to the game, the design of the enemies may be changed entirely.
Twitch streamers Lord Balvin and Pika Chulita were among those who raised the issue.
So– this game is developed by an indie team in Seoul called Neostream, it's not a Sony game.
It's not up to me to decide the intentions here, it could just be a tone deaf character design. but this shows you need some insight from indigenous and/or black people in the room.
— Balvin | Big Boss (@LordBalvin) June 12, 2020
Upcoming PlayStation 5 games
Little Devil Inside is just one of the many PlayStation 5 games that were featured at The Future of Gaming. Upcoming titles include Horizon Zero Dawn sequel Horizon Forbidden West, Resident Evil 8: Village, a Demon’s Souls remake, Hitman III, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, and an enhanced edition of Grand Theft Auto V.
Sony has also revealed the design of the PlayStation 5, but the console’s price has not yet been announced.
