Panic Art Studios CEO Elias Viglione has apologized after saying that he wanted to kill immigrants, and that his “life goal” was to murder “as many of these animals as possible.” Viglione has now called his comments a “bad moment,” claiming that he had been erroneously accused of trying to drug women while drinking at a bar, which had led to the racist and violent comments he had posted online.
Viglione, whose work includes the hack ‘n’ slash game Hero Siege, posted a series of tweets this past weekend, which began with him calling for people to “f***ing murder all these pieces of s*** who try to invade our countries to bring violence to innocent people’s lifes.” He then went on to say that his taxi driver had told him “that n******* and middle easterns were animals,” adding that he thought this also and that he was going to “personally make sure my every investment kills as many of these animals as possible.”
CONTENT WARNING: Racist and violent language.
The tweets can be viewed below:
https://twitter.com/HeyItsNasse/status/1231216331124609024?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1231216331124609024&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.gamerevolution.com%2Fwp-admin%2Fpost-new.php
Viglione deleted his Twitter account, but not before his tweets were screenshotted and reshared online. This saw many calling for Panic Art Studios to take action, and to remove him from his position at the top of the company.
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Viglione later tweeted the following statement from Panic Art Studios’ Twitter account:
“On Friday I was at a bar with friends, no negativity just chill and good times. At one point I was getting another beer and was just browsing memes at the counter, this guy came to the bar and walked str8 to me and said ‘could you come outside for a moment?’ I was like ‘Wut? Who are you? sure.’
I went outside calmly walking and following this guy, the dude wanted me to go out of the bar’s premise and at this point I asked ‘What is this thing really about?’ He came to me and whispered to my ear ‘You are drugging and trying to rape girls in here’, his somali friend then walked behind me and started staring me from behind him. I saw 2 additional Iraki and Somali men behind them sitting at the train station stairs watching at me. I for sure was not drugging anyone, or trying to rape anyone nor did I ever see these people before or even talked to them. I am always kind to people even when drunk.
Well now that we had a ‘conflict’ I was afraid for my life as I was against 5 sober men, being pretty drunk my self and the bouncer told me to leave so I had to just go out there and get shanked and robbed by these men. I had a long conversation with the bouncer, and he agreed to take me to the taxi. The 5 men ran away and jumped into the train, which made no sense to me. Who were they? Why were they targeting me from inside the bar?
I got to the taxi, a nice vietnamese guy managed to calm me down a bit as I was in a shock, I tipped him 10 euros since he helped me quite a bit. I went home and something just snapped inside me. I was in absolute anger and fear, and guess I just posted my feelings to Twitter (dont even know why, dont remember doing it). I slept for 48 hours str8 and I am still shaking in fear, pumped with adrenaline and having suicidal thoughts. I’m afraid of going outside, I don’t feel well.
What I said was wrong, people should respect each other and live along with no fear of getting mugged or killed by anyone. I am deeply sorry to every person this personally offended, not the people who are just trying to s*** on a person for having a bad moment.”
Later, in Hero Siege‘s public Discord server, Viglione added that he was “under a very strong ptsd psychosis,” and that he “felt extreme anger and hate towards these robbers and since they were immigrants it came out like that or something.”
He then added that he has “racist tendencies”:
This isn’t the first time that Viglione’s has posted bigoted comments online. Back in July 2018, he said that women “don’t have the interest or the capability” to be CEOs, responding to a female critic of his comments by adding: “This just proves women don’t have the nerves to be a ceo :)”
Viglione is still listed as the company’s CEO, alongside team members Jussi Kukkonen and Esko Salonen.
