Hundreds of people were fired for what they said about Charlie Kirk in the wake of his assassination earlier this year. Ex-Sucker Punch artist Drew Harrison was one of them. In her first interview since her joke about the murder prompted an online harassment campaign targeting the Ghost Of Yotei studio, she says Sony never asked her to remove the offending post or apologize for it before deciding to fire her.
Speaking to Aftermath, the 10-year veteran of the PlayStation first-party team outlined what she experienced on the inside the studio and the campaign online to get her tossed out of it. “I just thought, ‘I’m their entertainment for the day,’” Harrison said. “I assumed it was going to go how it always has: Nobody cares about what they say because they literally only harass for the fun of it.”
“I hope the shooter’s name is Mario so that Luigi knows his bro got his back,” she posted on Bluesky the day Kirk was shot. Online reactionaries like Mark “Grummz” Kern and others looking to exact revenge for anyone appearing to make light of the assassination began directing their followers to boycott Yotei and demand Harrison’s termination.
Aftermath reports that Sucker Punch became bombarded with so many anonymous calls that some employees were even instructed to unplug their desk phones. “I made the worst people on the internet mad,” Harrison wrote in the office chat the next day. “As an apology, there are banana muffins in the kitchen.”
But later that day, a member of Sucker Punch’s leadership reportedly published the following message in the company’s chat:
Due to a social media post by one of our team members, many corners of our studio and Sony organization are having to manage a developing situation,” the message read. “We may have to pause a trailer release…there will be some significant amount of work created now to ensure we keep the spotlight on the fantastic game we’ve all created. Please be mindful of how you represent yourself online…
Harrison told Aftermath she was contacted later that day for an unscheduled call with a Sony HR rep (not a studio manager) who told her she was being immediately fired for allegedly “inciting violence” with her social media joke.
“Full disclosure, the joke was not in the best taste,” Harrison said. “But at no point did anyone ask me to delete it. At no point did anyone ask me to apologize—and for the record, I would have. I would have worked with PR to write an apology. It feels like nobody investigated the harassment me and my coworkers were receiving.”
Sony has never directly commented on the reason for the firing. “I think we’re aligned as a studio that celebrating or making light of someone’s murder is a deal-breaker for us, and we condemn that, kind of in no uncertain terms,” studio co-founder Brian Fleming later told Game File. “That’s sort of our studio, and that’s kind of where we are.”
Harrison said no one from Sucker Punch’s leadership, including Fleming, reached out to her before Sony fired her. Ghost of Yotei, meanwhile, has gone on to sell millions of copies despite the boycott targeting Harrison and reactionary attacks against lead actor Erika Ishii (whose performance was nominated for a TGA).
