Chucklefish Apologises for "Insensitive" Wargroove Casting Choices

Wargroove developer Chucklefish has apologised over its casting process for the game’s upcoming DLC. In a statement on Twitter last week, the studio said that it “sincerely [apologised] for the harm we have caused.”

Last month, Chucklefish revealed the voice actors for Wargroove’s Double Trouble DLC. Three of the expansion’s four new arrivals are characters of colour, but all of them are voiced by white actors, resulting in a backlash from the community.

In response, Chucklefish said that “we want to be honest about what happened. During our casting process we knew that we didn’t want our own unconscious biases to impact who we hired to work on Wargroove.” As a result, the studio hired an external casting company, and handled auditions “blindly,” considering only audition files rather than headshots and back catalogues.

The studio also said that “posting photos of our voice actors beside characters of colour without acknowledgement of the systemic problem of representation in the industry was insensitive and poorly communicated.”