And real ones at Boss Key Productions’ offices
Cliff Bleszinski is no fan of North Carolina’s prejudicial “bathroom bill.”
The Boss Key Productions president and erstwhile Gears of War designer has been a vocal detractor of his home state’s House Bill 2, the controversial legislation that allows employers in North Carolina to discriminate against LGBTQ individuals and prohibits transgender people from using restrooms and locker rooms that correspond with their gender identity in government buildings and public schools.
In response, the company plans to include gender-neutral restrooms its upcoming game, LawBreakers.
Gender neutral bathrooms in our new game, @PatMcCroryNC. It takes place in the future, unlike the past you envision. pic.twitter.com/OPfXFyuZ7o
— Cliff Bleszinski (@therealcliffyb) May 6, 2016
Bleszinski broke the news in a tweet addressed to North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory, who signed the bill into law, while adding “[LawBreakers] takes place in the future, unlike the past you envision.”
Boss Key Productions isn’t just making a statement in the virtual world, though. The studio has also made two of the restrooms at its Raleigh, North Carolina offices gender neutral, Bleszkinski informed EGM Now in an interview published late last month.
“Two of our [office] bathrooms are gender neutral now,” Bleszinski said. “The biggest thing that people don’t seem to understand about human gender and sexuality is that it’s a spectrum. The older I get, the more empathy I have for people that aren’t like me.
“The [North Carolina Republican Party has] just lost their brains, and if those of us who can be defiant here and do what we can to usher in the new South, and that’s why I put my money where my mouth is and [why] the studio is here in the heart of downtown [Raleigh]. We’re gonna troll the crap out of Governor McCrory because he’s an idiot.”
After informing North Carolina last week that House Bill 2 violates multiple sections of the federal Civil Rights act, the Department of Justice announced plans Monday to file a federal suit against the state, Governor McCrory, the North Carolina Department of Public Safety, and the University of North Carolina.
Hours earlier, McCrory and Public Safety Secretary Frank Perry filed a separate federal suit accusing the Department of Justice and Attorney General Loretta Lynch of “a baseless and blatant overreach.”
While the federal government awaits a court order declaring the restroom restriction impermissibly discriminatory and a bar on its enforcement, it is threatening to slash federal funding for the the state’s university and department of public safety.
LawBreakers is currently in development for PC and is expected to release this summer.
