Jon “JonTron” Jafari’s removed voice over work for Playtonic Games’ recently released Yooka-Laylee has been revealed.
YouTuber JonTron was removed from the game by Playtonic over offensive racial comments he made during a live stream, in which he erroneously claimed that “wealthy blacks commit more crime than poor whites,” suggested there was a correlation between crimes committed by Africans and African-Americans, and said of immigrants: “If they assimilated, they would enter the gene pool eventually.” Playtonic later released a statement announcing JonTron would be removed from the game in a day one patch, leading to some accusing the developer of “censorship” and flooding its Steam and Kickstarter page with refund requests.
Also: Star Wars Battlefront 2 Reveal: Everything You Need to Know
With JonTron’s work for the game having been removed in an update, it could be found by those who played the game before it was released on its launch day, with the YouTube channel The Hivory Hub uploading his contributions. In the game JonTron plays a character locked in a portable toilet in World 5, with his voice work reduced to the familiar grunts and yelps that make up all of Yooka-Laylee‘s dialogue. He sends Yooka and Laylee on a mission to fix the toilet’s plumbing, commenting: “It’s a right mess in here… the plumbing’s had it and I’m on the verge of a serious problem.”
Listen to the removed voice clip below:
Another YouTube channel also uploaded the voice that replaced JonTron’s work for Yooka-Laylee, revealing how this exchange sounds in the game post-launch:
Yooka-Laylee released to a middling critical reception yesterday, with many bemoaning its reliance upon dated mechanics over improving upon the formula Playtonic’s team previously established during their work with Rare on the Nintendo 64 classic Banjo-Kazooie. In our review, we noted that while the game “may not live up to memories of Rare’s old 3D platformers,” that it was still a “platformer brimming with ideas.”
