Respawn Entertainment and EA have parted ways with Daniel Klein: He was the Lead Game Designer of the successful shooter Apex Legends. As the developer himself states, he was fired for “terrible and bigoted things” he said in 2007. He says he is now a different, better person.
This is Daniel Klein:
- Daniel Klein started like many developers at the bottom of game development. He began as a customer service representative for GOA in France and later reviewed the translation of Warhammer Online into German as a “QA Tester”. By the time he left France, he had risen to QA Lead.
- His career really took off in Los Angeles: He started at Riot Games, the developer of LoL, in 2010 and progressed from Community Coordinator to Champion Designer and System Designer in 8 years. He worked on champions like Lucian, Azir, Tahm Kench, Taliyah, and Kayn.
- In January 2020, he joined Respawn Entertainment and was promoted to “Lead Game Designer” in November of the same year . Apex Legends is EA’s shooter hit of the past few years and is considered a major future project for the company.
From QA Tester in France to Chief Designer of Apex Legends: This is an impressive career that Daniel Klein has built in 13 years. However, something from before he started his career in the gaming industry has now caught up to him.
“There are very dark days behind me”
This is what Klein says now:
Klein says on Twitter: He had his last working day for Respawn on Friday:
I want to be very open. I feel like my heart is broken. There are very dark days behind me.
Apparently, he was fired for “terrible, hypocritical things” he said in 2007. Klein says: “I agree that THIS guy should really be fired.” But Klein adds that he has invested a lot of energy over the past 14 years to become a better person.
Back then he said sexist and racist things, but not because he believed them, but because he wanted to provoke a reaction from people. He does not excuse it, as the words had the same effect, but he mentions it now nevertheless: With the help of many people, he could embark on the journey to become a better person:
To be clear, I’m not saying that Respawn and EA did anything wrong. They were absolutely right to fire me, even if I disagree with their decision.
Klein says he would prefer to simply switch off and relax now. But that’s not how he functions. He has a paralyzing sense of fear and he needs to at least look for a new job now, otherwise it will eat him up.
He particularly feels sorry for the Apex team, who are now facing problems that they cannot afford. However, Klein believes that Apex has a great future ahead, as there will be so much “cool stuff” to come.
Awful posts from 2007 resurface after heated balancing discussion
What did he say? Apparently, Daniel Klein’s involvement in a balancing discussion in Apex Legends has come back to haunt him.
The YouTuber “Thordan Smash” shows that Klein acted controversially in current balancing discussions around Apex Legends. For example, he explains to a user on Twitter, who is complaining about the balance, that he should do the job himself for a few years before telling others how the job is done.
The YouTuber then presents posts from 2007 by Klein that were unearthed after the discussion. Three posts are shown, which were “racist and sexist”, as Klein himself admits 14 years later.
He referred to women as “unreliable, crazy people whose brains are in their breasts,” and also claimed that women have the idiot chromosome pair (XX).
The YouTuber deduces from another tweet that Klein was already 27 years old at the time. He should have known better. Someone like that is intolerable for Apex Legends, which presents itself as a game that emphasizes diversity and represents an open worldview.
The situation has an extra note right now because Klein has recently expressed himself extensively on Twitter about the sexism scandal at Blizzard. He wrote that he was especially disappointed by Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street (WoW, LoL). He had previously been a hero to him.
Some suspect that EA and Respawn might have acted so decisively because the Blizzard scandal looms large.
This is the discussion around his dismissal: The dismissal of Klein is being discussed on reddit. There, the developer had apparently been on the radar anyway because he had come under scrutiny for controversial remarks regarding the balancing of Apex Legends.
Klein had evidently made some enemies on reddit in recent months, as can be read from the toxic tone of the comments.
The internet forgets nothing, and some posts can ruin a career years later:
Twitch streamer becomes a pro in Valorant for a top team, fired 3 days later
