According to Kotaku, former Sucker Punch artist Drew Harrison was fired from the Ghost of Yotei studio over a joke she posted on Bluesky the day Charlie Kirk was assassinated earlier this year. The 10-year PlayStation first-party veteran said her post—”I hope the shooter’s name is Mario so that Luigi knows his bro got his back”—prompted online reactionaries like Mark “Grummz” Kern to organize boycotts and demand her termination. Harrison claims Sony never asked her to remove the offending post or apologize before firing her during an unscheduled HR call, where she was terminated for allegedly “inciting violence.” The harassment campaign became so severe that Sucker Punch employees were instructed to unplug their desk phones, yet Ghost of Yotei went on to sell millions of copies despite the controversy.
The corporate response
Here’s the thing that stands out: Harrison says nobody from Sucker Punch’s leadership reached out to her before Sony fired her. Not even studio co-founder Brian Fleming, who later told Game File that “celebrating or making light of someone’s murder is a deal-breaker for us.” But if that’s truly the studio position, why not give the employee a chance to correct course? Harrison explicitly said she would have worked with PR to write an apology if asked. Instead, she was cut loose immediately after the company chat message about “managing a developing situation.”
The harassment campaign
The whole situation reveals how corporate America now responds to online mobs. According to Aftermath, Sucker Punch became so bombarded with anonymous calls that employees had to unplug phones. Harrison recognized what was happening—”I made the worst people on the internet mad,” she wrote in office chat—but the studio leadership apparently prioritized appeasing the mob over supporting a decade-long employee. She even brought banana muffins as an apology to coworkers. Basically, we’re seeing companies sacrifice individual employees to protect brand perception, regardless of whether the employee would have willingly complied with corrective measures.
Broader implications
This case isn’t isolated. We’re seeing a pattern where corporations immediately terminate employees over social media controversies rather than managing the situation internally. And it’s creating a chilling effect across creative industries. When studios can fire 10-year veterans without even a conversation, what message does that send to other developers? The fact that Ghost of Yotei sold millions anyway suggests these harassment campaigns might not actually impact sales as much as companies fear. So why the rush to fire? It feels like corporate risk-aversion has completely overtaken reasonable HR processes.
