EA has fired Daniel Klein, Wattson designer and Apex Legends balancer, after a series of slurs against women and Black people surfaced online.
Klein admitted he made the comments on July 27, the same day Activision Blizzard workers walked out in protest of management's response to California's lawsuit, and announced his departure from Respawn on Twitter soon after.
Klein made the comments in blog posts from 2007, where he claimed Africans were "animals" who would "shit all over the place" if shown kindness and women, biologically fated to be "morons," were incapable of rational behavior.
In his announcement, Klein said he knew these comments would "get a reaction out of people" and that since then, he's "poured so much energy into becoming a better person."
He also said in comments Kotaku obtained that he knew this moment would likely happen.
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EA Fires Apex Legends Designer Daniel Klein after Racist, Mysoginist Comments Surface
"There’s... no doubt in my mind that they came to light because someone went looking for things to hurt me with," Klein told Kotaku, referring to issues certain segments of the Apex Legends community have with his so-called "virtue signaling" and promoting the Legend Wattson.
"EA was aware of this allegation, and I specifically asked them to be on the lookout for these strategies being used against other employees in the future," he continued.
Respawn reportedly asked the original poster of Klein's 2007 comments to remove them, though Twitter user Apex_Sherrif re-posted them following Klein's admission that they were true.
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