Phasmophobia is perhaps the best ghost game of all time and holds a sizable player base. The uproar was sparked when the game's Discord administrator, who goes by the handle Charcoal Salamander, was accused of sharing nude photos with other community members and making racist remarks. What may or may not have happened with this accusation is what makes this issue so significant.

The controversy began in January, when Charcoal was accused of sexually harassing another community member on January 25. Developer Kinetic Games suspended them during the investigation, but accepted Charcoal's evidence on January 30, and other administrators spent "about two weeks" concluding that Charcoal "did nothing wrong and did not harass people." Charcoal was then reinstated.

Things then quieted down until August 15, when the studio received a further e-mail about the allegations. Since the email contained no additional evidence and had been previously "resolved," the lead developer, DK, decided not to investigate the studio itself.

On August 27, things began to move. The allegations began to gain attention again in the Phasmophobia community, including Discord and reddit, and the latter's new account began messaging Kinetic Games lead artist Corey 'CJ' Dixon about it.

Charcoal has been accused of using racist language on at least two occasions, with a scrolling screenshot video showing him talking about "squinting" in a Chinese context and then making a racist joke about the Japanese; the second accusation, that Chacor received nude photos from someone and offered to share them with friends via DM. There is no indication as to whether or not he shared the photos, only that the offer was made. There are screenshots of the exchange that seem to support these claims. As for the other claims, I'll leave them aside since there seems to be no evidence of any of them.

CJ's response to this reddit account's concerns about charcoal was not a good one. In a later published DM, the developer wrote: "As for sharing the nudes, he clearly states that he didn't ask for them, but she sent them anyway at her own risk. So if he wanted to give it to a fellow member, I think that's fair game. I don't agree with that, but there is no such penalty as removing him from the team. But I can discuss it with them."

A phrase like "fair game imo" in the context of sharing nude photos should make any sensible person cringe. However, sharing nude photos without consent is not normal and is in no way "fair game."

Once CJ's comments were made public, the community exploded and there was no shortage of people condemning the developer's response. To be clear about the situation at this point, people believe that Charcoal should be stripped of responsibility for these alleged past actions and banned. People are further outraged by developer CJ's comments, which are widely seen as downplaying the allegations and representing an offensive strain of "bro" culture.

The controversy culminated in Kinetic Games belatedly realizing that it had made a mistake in its response to the situation. It issued a statement on Saturday, saying, "We would like to apologize for the way we handled this situation, for holding the administrators back for so long, and for the delay in responding.

The allegations have resurfaced with new screenshots, and they have launched an investigation with Discord administrators. "We have come to the conclusion that the administrator involved needs to be banned from our discord server." "He is no longer involved with the Phasmophobia community and will have no further opportunity to be involved in the future."

Recognizing that CJ is now part of the story, the statement goes on to say." I apologize for the way one of our developers approached the situation. He then apologizes for his language and will learn from this experience in the future."

This will not happen again in the future.

This did not put things right. People were angry that Charcoal was accused, angry that Kinetic Games seemed to deny the allegations for so long, and furious at the way CJ tried to handle the matter.

To be honest, I have omitted elements of this fiasco because it is an old fiasco. It is worth mentioning, however, not only that it was bad, but that CJ engaged the account that made these allegations and asked for evidence that would allow him to take action. This contradicts the notion that he outright denied the allegations. He also clearly realized he had made a mistake and issued a full apology on social media, albeit after his response was exposed.

However, as an indication of just how complicit things were surrounding Kinetic Games and its involvement, Kinetic Games has now issued a further statement clarifying elements of its initial statement.

I don't blame them for skipping that wall of text. The statement presents a timeline of events from the developer's perspective, acknowledges that the issue was handled improperly, and emphasizes that CJ issued an apology and wrote this text because of "misinformation" about what happened. And CJ issued an apology and emphasized that he wrote this because of "misinformation" about what happened:

"The Kinetic Games development team does not condone the sharing of private images of any kind without consent. We would also like to emphasize that we do not condone the racist remarks posted by Charcoal and that they do not reflect the views or values of other members of the team.

"We will be restructuring our official Phasmophobia Discord staff. We are vigilant about future misconduct and will take firm and appropriate action. Finally, we will ensure that we are personally involved in any future investigations.

"We sincerely apologize for how we handled this situation.

On one level, this is sadly a common story on the Internet, stories of shared nudity and alleged racism in nested spaces. The other is an unusually troubling example of the problems modern developers face when things like community management and semi-official Discord channels are not handled with the professionalism often required in these areas.

As will no doubt be obvious by now to Kinetic Games, it is not a problem for most people that developers do not run their own Discord channel, but instead use it for announcements and occasional developer drop-ins, leaving the day-to-day management to volunteer community preferred to leave the day-to-day management to the volunteer community members and administrators. That may seem like an ideal solution, however, most island utopias tend to end up like "Lord of the Flies."

This is an objective lesson for developers that one bad apple eventually rots the whole barrel. By leaving the issue in the hands of the community for so long and believing that the right conclusion had been reached, Kinetic Games essentially left itself open to the charge of not caring about something rather unpleasant that was happening on the game's official channels (presumably the main channel).

The studio did the right thing, albeit belatedly. One of the developers learned a hard lesson about dealing with serious allegations. And the charcoal went up in smoke. The stench may linger for a while yet, but things seem to be cooling down. It is, of course, ironic that a game about almost invisible fears would come to a standstill because it refused to take real-world fears seriously enough.