Double Eleven publicly disavows Testology

In the wake of Testology founder Andy Robson's controversial comments about wanting to "get rid of every Muslim" in the UK, British developer Double Eleven (Prison Architect, Super Cloudbuilt) has come forward to publicly state that the studio will not work with Testology in the future again.

On its official Twitter page, Double Eleven noted that it sent the following message to all its staff: "You've probably seen articles circling about Testology's Andy Robson's comments this week, following the London terror attack. While we've worked with them in the past, and have been happy with their service, we are not planning to use them again.

"We hope for the sake of the talented and hardworking staff at Testology, that Andy is able to sincerely scrutinize and reflect upon his ignorant and misdirected statements. We do not tolerate religious persecution in any form."

One of Testology's staff went on to reply to the tweet, commenting, "I hope you guys don't tar the good people with the same brush. I can respect the decision tho." To which, Double Eleven rightly responded to with: "Testology is full of good, hard-working people. Generalisations are what got us into this mess in the first place."

For his part, Robson has since apologized for the comments, and clarified that he meant to say that his views were on "extremist Muslims," but some were not happy with his apology statement either. James Batchelor's report on Testology noted that the company may have been losing some business following Robson's comments, and now this confirmation from Double Eleven cutting ties certainly shows that.

A number of developers across the globe have been fighting for more diversity both in the workplace and in representation in games themselves. Muslim indie developer Rami Ismail of Vlambeer commented to GamesIndustry.biz that prejudice is still far too prevalent across the games business.

"It's not common, but it's still far too common," he said. "It has a stifling effect on Muslim developers - and being a visible Muslim in the games industry, I got a number of distraught e-mails about this particular [Testology] post from British Muslims. It also enforces the feeling of not being welcome in a culture, and I think many game developers will tell you that the games industry is home to them.

"In the end, many of us are a bunch of geeks and nerds and creatives and otherwise outcasts throughout youth, and being outcast again from country and passion just for having bits of a religion in common with a socio-political terrorist movement across the world is discouraging."