BioWare apologises for transgender character treatment

Developer BioWare continues to apologise for Mass Effect: Andromeda.

Having yesterday laid down a road map for ongoing changes to the game that will be rolled out over the next two months, the studio has now directly addressed criticism of the game’s handling of transgender character Hainly Abrams is depicted in the sci-fi RPG.

The interaction with Abrams, which can be seen below, was seen by some as forced, as if BioWare were shoe-horning in the issue with no context.

"At BioWare, we strive to make games that are representative of our players and the broader world around us. We do this by actively consulting within our diverse workforce, as well as speaking with different communities,” the studio has now said.

"In Mass Effect: Andromeda, one of our non-player characters, Hainly Abrams, was not included in a caring or thoughtful way. We apologise to anyone who interacted with or was hurt by this conversation. This was never our intent, and was an unfortunate byproduct of the iterative process of game design and a change in the structure of the character’s dialogue.

"We have had several discussions with members of the transgender community, both internally at BioWare and in the broad community, and we are working to remedy this issue. Once the changes are implemented, Hainly will only reveal certain information to Ryder after they have developed trust, and only if the players chooses to support her.”

Abrams was included in yesterday’s long list of in-game issues that will be addressed. A patch will be released today that will not only improve performance and address a few causes of crashes, but also introduce increased inventory limits, improve multiplayer matchmaking, decrease the cost and increase the availability of Remnant decryption keys and add galaxy map travel skipping.

Regarding Hainly Abrams: pic.twitter.com/nFpUKihqOj

— BioWare (@bioware) April 5, 2017