Renowned game designer David Jaffe (Twisted Metal, God of War, Drawn to Death) revealed to have turned down an offer to direct a $100 million game project in development at Tencent, and he did so because of his views on China's government.

　　Jaffe talked about this in the latest episode of the Sacred Symbols+ podcast, hosted by Colin Moriarty. The podcast is paywalled (you need to subscribe to the Last Stand Media Patreon to get access), but VideoGamesChronicle reported the relevant statements made by David Jaffe.

　　I had a $100 million deal. I was courted by a Chinese company… and I said ‘no thank you’… because you’re Tencent and I want nothing to do with you.

　　It was bad because it was the western Tencent, and it was a western guy that I respect that was calling me and I wasn’t trying to shame the guy. I hope he’s got thick enough skin, and he’s been an executive in the business way longer than I have, but I was just like ‘man, I don’t want to do business with a company like that, with a government like that.'

　　Stop killing people. Again, people will be like, ‘America’s hands aren’t clean’, no they are not clean at all but we’re also not, you know, we all have a system that if we actually gave a shit, we could change it.

　　In China, you just get picked up off the street if you go online and say something bad about the police or the government or anything and who knows when they’ll see you again. That’s not even mentioning if you’re a fucking Uyghur.

　　After the story started making rounds, David Jaffe also tweeted a block of text that supposedly included his reply to the aforementioned Tencent executive. It's pretty much impossible to verify its veracity, though.

　　Being accused of making up the tencent thing. Man, I am so sorry some of you guys have been so harmed by the media (I get it) that you don't know who to trust. But love, like, or hate me, I don't lie. And I always save the receipts: pic.twitter.com/6e9XLyeTIE

　　— DAVID SCOTT JAFFE (@davidscottjaffe) April 19, 2022

　　About a year ago, David Jaffe joined the Polish game company Movie Games as a consultant and supervisor on the board. The original announcement even said Movie Games might finance Jaffe's new projects, though that part doesn't appear to have materialized yet.

　　As for Tencent, the Chinese corporation continues to acquire majority or minority stakes in an increasing number of Western companies. In the last six months alone, they made investments in 1C Entertainment, Inflexion Games, Remedy, Turtle Rock Studios, Playtonic, and Wake Up Interactive.