Chris Avellone has been dropped from Dying Light 2 following sexual harassment claims

Prominent game writer Chris Avellone is no longer working on Techland’s Dying Light 2 after allegations of sexual harassment surfaced this week.

Avellone, who has previously worked on games such as Obsidian’s Knights of the Old Republic 2 and Respawn’s Jedi: Fallen Order, had been serving as the game’s narrative designer under contract.

In a statement published on Monday, Polish studio Techland said it had decided to end its cooperation following the sexual harassment claims.

“We treat matters of sexual harassment and disrespect with utmost care, and have no tolerance for such behaviours – it applies to both our employees as well as external consultants, Chris among them,” Techland wrote. “This is why, together with Chris Avellane, we’ve decided to end our cooperation.”

The studio said it was still working towards delivering “the experience we promised” in Dying Light 2.

Another company Avellone was working with, Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2‘s Paradox Interactive, released a statement claiming that the writer’s involvement on the game was “brief” and that none of the content he produced would be used.

Spanish developer Gato Studio, whose RPG The Waylanders had been worked on by Avellone, also claimed it would cut ties with the writer following the sexual harassment allegations.

Dying Light 2 was announced at Xbox’s E3 2018 briefing by Avellone himself and is the sequel to 2015’s open-world action RPG.

The game received a new trailer during Xbox’s E3 conference in 2019 when a spring 2020 release window was also announced, but in January of this year, Techland delayed the title indefinitely.

“Unfortunately we need more development time to fulfil our vision”, Techland CEO Paweł Marchewka explained. “We will have more details to share in the coming months, and will get back to you as soon as we have more information.”

Techland has revealed nothing about zombie sequel publicly since then. In late April it announced Dying Light Hellraid, new DLC for the original game based on its unreleased first-person fantasy slasher Hellraid.