After CEO Elias Viglione of Finnish indie game developer Panic Art Studios went on a wildly offensive online rant, the small company released a statement in a questionable attempt at damage control. Viglione and his studio have gone completely dark since his hateful tirade was found, but his words can't be so easily withdrawn now that they're out.

Panic Art Studios, best known for the pixel art roguelike Hero Siege, is a tiny team comprised of just programmer Jussi Kukkonen, web developer Esko Salonen, and CEO Elias Viglione. Regardless of the views held by the other two developers, the small size of Panic Art Studios means that just one employee's rambling rant in a public forum will be justifiably taken to represent a whopping third of the company's overall worldview. Viglione obviously didn't consider this before speaking, nor did he weigh the fact that the gaming industry is already widely perceived to have a racism problem, with highly visible gamers like PewDiePie dropping racial slurs on-stream and major developers like Minecraft's Notch ruining his reputation over far-right xenophobic rhetoric online.

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On February 22, Elias Viglione tweeted out the series of abhorrent threats seen below. He's since deleted his account, but his remarks have been preserved by Nasim Haque. Viglione claims he had a bad night and as a result fostered an immediate and intense hatred for "far leftists," "pieces of sh-t who try to invade our countries," and others singled out on the basis of skin color and ethnicity. His handful of tweets were apparently a rallying cry aimed at an undefined coalition of similarly fragile individuals, calling for the "f-cking murder" of those he deems undesirable. After allegedly restraining himself from "killing these 2 guys outside the club," he says a taxi driver expressed sentiments which conveniently lined up precisely with his own expressed views. He concludes that his newfound "life goal" is that his "every investment kills as many of these animals as possible."

Once Viglione's vitriolic spew was discovered and shared around by dismayed lookers-on, he released a statement in a Panic Art Studios tweet that inversely labels himself a victim. Although the team's Twitter account has since gone private, a screenshot of the statement was shared by Mellow_Online1. The gist of Viglione's overlapping excuses is that he was purportedly bullied by men he genetically identified as "Iraki and Somali" before they all happened to run away, "which made no sense" to him.

It was a "bad moment," indeed. Based on the backhanded tone of his still very racist apology, what Viglione seems to really be sorry about is that Twitter isn't a platform on which he can scream out his every horrible thought without any consequences. This grows more apparent when considering a past controversy instigated by Viglione (also provided courtesy of Nasim Haque), in which he stated that "most women just either don't have the interest or the capability" to be gaming executives, amplifying sexist sentiments that continue to plague his industry.

Elias Viglione should own up to his detestable words and actions, issue an actual apology, and face the music with the relevant authorities if requested, and he should do so ASAP. His studio has the unsavory privilege of being publicly associated with his ear-splitting calls for racial killings until he does.

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Source: Nasim Haque/Twitter, Panic Art Studios/Twitter, Imgur