THQ Nordic group CEO issues official apology for 8chan AMA

THQ Nordic AB, the parent company of THQ Nordic GmbH Vienna, has issued an official statement regarding last week's incident.

Lars Wingefors, co-founder and group CEO of THQ Nordic AB, apologised for THQ Nordic GmbH Vienna's actions in a letter to employees, consumers, and partners.

Last week, THQ Nordic GmbH Vienna decided to host an AMA on 8chan, a site so notorious for its content, Google no longer lists it in search results. 8chan is a 4chan spin-off, a board mostly famous for hosting child porn, as well as racist, homophobic and other forms of abhorrent content.

Though it's hard to imagine THQ Nordic somehow being unaware of the site's history before agreeing to do the AMA, the company nonetheless backtracked after realising the implications of what it had done. PR and marketing director Philipp Brock said he regrets the decision, and that it wasn't an attempt at "being edgy."

Now, after dodging it for days, group-CEO Lars Wingefors has weighed in. His statement is included below in full.

"This letter is to offer my sincerest apologies and regret for THQ Nordic GmbH Vienna’s interaction with the controversial website 8chan last Tuesday, February 26. I condemn all unethical content this website stands for. Even if no one within the THQ Nordic Group would ever endorse such content, I realize simply appearing there gave an implicit impression that we did.

"As co-Founder and group CEO of THQ Nordic AB, I take full responsibility for all of THQ Nordic GmbH‘s actions and communications. I have spent the past several days conducting an internal investigation into this matter. I assure you that every member of the organization has learned from this past week’s events. I take this matter very seriously and we will take appropriate action to make sure we have the right policies and systems in place to avoid similar mistakes in the future.

"As a Swedish based, fast growing group, we firmly support equality and diversity. We are also working actively to combat discrimination, harassment, and misconduct. We are already in the process of developing new work processes, based on the United Nations’ SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) and using the GRI (Global Reporting Initiative) standards, and we will accelerate this work going forward."