Jon ‘JonTron’ Jafari has been removed from a video game called Yooka-Laylee by U.K. developer Playtonic after the YouTube star made several incendiary, far-right statements in recent weeks about immigration and race.
Jafari, who counts roughly 3.1 million subscribers on his own gaming channel, and who co-founded a network of gaming channels called NormalBoots, according to Gizmodo, tweeted his support for Iowa Representative Steve King’s anti-immigrant statement that “We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.”
Subsequently, in a two-hour livestream with fellow gamer Steve Bonnell, Jafari likened immigration to apartheid South Africa and made other false claims, including that Mexicans are setting up ethnic enclaves to take over parts of America and wealthy black Americans commit more crimes than poor whites. He also expressed anxiety about the fact that he believes whites will become a minority in the U.S. by the year 2042, according to Gizmodo.
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Wow, how scandalous, Steve King doesn’t want his country invaded by people who have contempt for his culture and people! NAZI!!!
— Jon Jafari (@JonTronShow) March 12, 2017
In addition to losing subscribers in the wake of the controversial comments, Jafari’s career took another hit when Playtonic opted to drop his voice from one of the minor characters in Yooka-Laylee, reports GamesIndustry.biz. Playtonic originally invited Jafari to be a part of the game roughly two years ago after creating a Kickstarter campaign for Yooka-Laylee, which is slated to drop on April 11.
“In light of his recent personal viewpoints, we have made the decision to remove JonTron’s inclusion in the game via a forthcoming content update,” Playtonic told GamesIndustry.biz in a statement. “Playtonic is a studio that celebrates diversity in all forms and strives to make games that everyone can enjoy. As such, we deeply regret any implied association that could make players feel anything but 100% comfortable in our game worlds, or distract from the incredible goodwill and love shown by our fans and Kickstarter backers.”
Jafari responded to his removal from Yooka-Laylee on Twitter:
Unfortunate to see Playtonic remove me from Yooka Laylee, but I understand their decision. I wish them the best with their launch!
— Jon Jafari (@JonTronShow) March 23, 2017
