The CEO THQ Nordic AB - the parent company of THQ Nordic Gmbh Vienna - Lars Wingefors has released a statement apologising for the 8chan AMA held last week.
The businessman says that he has been conducting an investigation into how the Ask Me Anything that happened on the, er, 'controversial' image board 8chan, saying that the entire organisation has learnt from this.
"This letter is to offer my sincerest apologies and regret for THQ Nordic GmbH Vienna’s interaction with the controversial website 8chan last Tuesday, February 26," Wingefors said.
"I condemn all unethical content this website stands for. Even if no one within the THQ Nordic Group would ever endorse such content, I realise simply appearing there gave an implicit impression that we did.
"As co-founder and Group CEO of THQ Nordic AB, I take full responsibility for all of THQ Nordic GmbH‘s actions and communications. I have spent the past several days conducting an internal investigation into this matter. I assure you that every member of the organization has learned from this past week’s events. I take this matter very seriously and we will take appropriate action to make sure we have the right policies and systems in place to avoid similar mistakes in the future.
"As a Swedish based, fast growing group, we firmly support equality and diversity. We are also working actively to combat discrimination, harassment, and misconduct. We are already in the process of developing new work processes, based on the United Nations’ SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) and using the GRI (Global Reporting Initiative) standards, and we will accelerate this work going forward."
The PR and marketing director of THQ Nordic Gmbh Vienna Philipp Brock apologised in the aftermath of the AMA which he was part of, saying that he did not do the appropriate checks on what 8chan was all about.
"I personally agreed to this AMA without doing my proper due diligence to understand the history and the controversy of the site," Brock wrote.
"I do not condone child pornography, white supremacy, or racism in any shape or form. I am terribly sorry for the short-sightedness of my (!) decision, and promise to be far more vigorous in my assessment of these activities in the future. This was not about being edgy, this blew up and I very much regret to have done it in the first place."
When the AMA was first announced via the THQ Nordic Twitter account, many in the industry assumed that it had been hacked. PCGamesInsider.biz reached out to Brock, who confirmed that this was a planned event. At the time, we also emailed Wingefors, who referred us to the aforementioned apology from Brock, which had just been published on Twitter.
Confusion between the parent company - THQ Nordic AB - and the publishing arm, THQ Nordic Gmbh Vienna, is something that Wingefors is aware of, saying in the past that they're looking to change THQ Nordic AB's name in the near future.
