No Rest for the Wicked: Moon Studios CEO shoots against “Cancel Culture”

There is usually a separation between politics and video games, but there are always in-depth discussions about our favorite medium. So the CEO of Moon Studios is now opening a barrel, but it's not even about his own No Rest for the Wicked.

The reason for the stress is a posting by Gamestar editor and live streamer Maurice Weber on X (formerly Twitter). In this he expresses concerns that every new game starts a discussion about supposed “wokeness”. As an example, he cites a discussion thread on Steam about Hades II. Here, a user asks if the title is “woke” because he saw “a Greek god in a wheelchair and another non-Caucasian representation.”

Under this posting from Weber, Thomas Maler, CEO of Moon Studios, spoke up. The head of the studio behind No Rest for the Wicked and Ori and the Blind Forest doesn't seem to be a fan of “Cancel Culture and Co”, as he states in a detailed posting.

Below we quote a lot directly from the posting, so the words come from Mahler himself and not from us. First of all, the CEO shoots directly at Maurice Weber: “I would also advise you to look at the whole thing a little more differently, especially since you profile yourself as a journalist, but then you have a pretty narrow-minded point of view and obviously not for it “You wonder for a second what's actually happening.”

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He then goes further and draws comparisons to the time of the Third Reich, for example with a well-known quote from the Nazi regime opponent Martin Niemöller. He then goes on to say: “Instead of letting artists be artists, Hollywood and (almost) all game developers on the West Coast have found it right that you simply have to use film and video games to force your own political opinions on others. If you If you now counter that this is not the case, I expect proper research from you as a journalist. And at the same time it has become normal to always point the finger at others who perhaps think differently than we do and even listening to them will immediately hit them in the face. A rogue who is reminded of the old Nazi methods.”

The further posting shoots even further against Gamestar and games journalism in general, which increasingly relies on clickbait instead of formulating thoughts and doing research. For this reason, according to Mahler, Moon Studios “turned off the tap” to the editorial team.

The detailed answer came from Mahler's private account, which he regularly used in the past to publish updates on the status of No Rest for the Wicked. Accordingly, it can be perceived as somewhat more official and as a result, the newly released game is already receiving its first negative reviews on Steam. Not least because he also published the post again in English.

As expected, there is currently a heated discussion in the comments and more and more statements are being made about Thomas Mahler himself. A certain “bro mentality” is denounced at management level, in which female employees in particular are treated noticeably worse.