The team behind Heartopia, the Animal Crossing-esque cozy sim that was forced to disclose its gen-AI usage on Steam back in January, has expressed its “deepest apologies” and removed a quest from the game following backlash from the playerbase. The now removed quest featured person of color named Kapil who would make “monkey noises” and dance after being fed a poisoned mushroom.
Kapil and his questline were added as part of an in-game event on March 4 and subsequently removed on March 5. While the majority of the initial criticism seems to be contained within the Heartopia Discord server, it didn’t take long for a video of Kapil to reach X. “@MyHeartopia I was made aware of a disturbing new questline in Heartopia’s recent update,” wrote user LetzPlayK. “On this quest, you feed a mushroom to one of the FEW POC NPCs, and after they eat the mushroom, they jump up and down and make MONKEY NOISES. I’m disgusted by the blatant racism.”
In an announcement posted in the Heartopia Discord by one of DX’s staff members, the developers explained that Kapil’s actions were supposed to “depict the symptoms of dizziness and loss of bodily control.” “We have since promptly removed this action. We sincerely apologize to anyone who may have felt offended. We appreciate the feedback that brought this matter to our attention. Moving forward, we will take this incident as a learning opportunity and strive to promote an inclusive and congenial environment within Heartopia. We extend our deepest apologies once again.”
According to commenters in the server, the “action” wasn’t the only thing that was removed from the game. The NPC in question, and the questline tied to him, vanished from Heartopia just before DX’s announcement went live, which seemingly means that Kapil was added and removed within the space of 24 hours. On one hand, that’s a great response time. On the other hand, it’s baffling that something like this even made it into the game in the first place.