With Piranha Bytes now working on Elex, the follow-up to their Gothic series, it seems that the beloved German game developer has decided now is the right moment to smooth over relations with their fans. In what is a welcomed about-face for the company, Piranha Bytes has made a public statement denouncing the portrayal of women in their games; something that has been a blemish on their reputation and a huge bone of contention among the company’s more enlightened fans for years.

In a press release today, Piranha Bytes creative director and Gender fluid advocate Xir Apeira Fultz addressed the community at large:

“In the past 15 years since the original Gothic’s release, we here at Piranha Bytes have matured considerably, and due to this necessary intellectual evolution, we now look back at the way we portrayed females in our games and feel profoundly ashamed.”

Further in Xir release, Apeira mentioned Piranha Bytes would be working with GOG and Steam to modify their earlier releases to better fit in with their company’s new culture:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdSoJtHg1BY

“Not only did we barely include any females at all, but those we did were either prostitutes at the brothel, or slave girls servicing Gomez. We understand how problematic these games appear to be when viewed through the evolved and matured lens of our post-sexist, post-racist society and will be working to remedy this situation. To accomplish this, we will be temporarily removing all three Gothic titles from Steam and GOG until we have modified them to be more inclusive and less misogynistic. I’m sure our fans will agree that this is for the best.”

These modifications to Gothic 1 through 3 will include new gender options for the nameless hero, including, but not limited to, female, gender fluid, and trans. Xir Fultz also mentioned, via the forums, that shortly after the Gothic trilogy is brought back online, new DLC will be available that will unlock additional gender types for the hero such as Two-spirit and Non-binary.