Update 7/5: Triternion has released an official statement on the controversy. Original story follows.

Mordhau, the medieval combat multiplayer game, has become much popular than anyone could have guessed. However, Mordhau has struggled with a toxic community, where the developers themselves have admitted that there is "a lot of racism" found in their game's chat. The toxic community is one reason why Mordhau developers Triternion have been hesitant to expand the game's customization options to let people play more than just white male characters, but it has discussed the possibility of giving players the option to toggle other races and genders on or off.

This is according to Mordhau developers Mike Desrosiers and Andrew Geach, who spoke to PC Gamer about the game's toxic community. Triternion hopes that the option to toggle non-white males on and off will perhaps be one way to avoid making the game even more toxic. "Whatever stance we take officially, some group of people are going to be upset with us. And so, ideally we'd put the power in the players' hands, and give them the option to enable and disable different things," Desrosiers explained.

Triternion feels as though the "realism" complaint some gamers would have if Mordhau were to feature characters other than white males is "valid." PC Gamer later asked for clarification that it was being discussed that players would be able to disable seeing female, black, or Middle Eastern characters. "Yeah, that seems to be the current thinking. It’s not set in stone, it depends how our community is in the future. Maybe if it calms down in the future, the game still has a lot of players, a lot of toxicity, a lot of racism, a lot of politics, everything, people argue in chat about all sorts of nonsense," Geach said.

After PC Gamer's report, the official Mordhau Twitter page came out to dispute the claims. "We do not, nor have we ever, had plans to add a toggle to hide other ethnicities or 'disable characters that aren't white' in Mordhau. Any claims to the contrary are false. Official statement coming soon." The official statement has yet to be released at the time of this writing. However, Triternion's claim contradicts direct quotes from its developers, who said quite plainly that the option was being discussed and considered.

It's clear that as Mordhau grows more popular and more people are hopping online to play lutes and build ballistas, the issues with racism and general toxicity will need to be addressed. We will update this article if and when Triternion offers an official statement on the matter.

Mordhau is out now for PC.

Source: PC Gamer