The developers of the popular Euro Truck Simulator series have apologized for comments the studio made in a press release about the COVID-19 vaccine.
The Czech studio issued a press release on Friday about its “Hauling Hope” in-game campaign that is raising awareness for COVID-19 vaccine distribution. So it took some by surprise to see a line in the release that stated, “We do not take a stand neither for or against vaccines.”
The studio has now explained what happened. This was a “f**k up,” according to a developer at SCS Software; it was a mistake driven by a language and translation barrier, the studio explained to The Gamer.
Producer Tomas Duda said they had no idea that the press release went out in the first place. “We’re talking about this in company chat. F**k up happened,” Duda said.
“We will do better. That sentence had no place in the press release, it was a f**k up,” Duda added.
“We’re very sorry for the press release about the new in-game event, the sentence ‘we do not take a stand neither for or against vaccines’ had no place there,” Duda explained. “We wanted to write that no matter if you stand for vaccines or against them, truckers have to work really hard and we wanted to highlight that and focus the event on this. We continuously support efforts in the fight against COVID-19 and we hope for COVID-19 to be over soon.”
The Hauling Hope campaign aims to raise awareness for the truck drivers who are delivering the vaccines to where they need to go. “We see hope in the creation of the COVID-19 Vaccines and their rapid worldwide roll-out. We would like to, once again, recognize the selfless drivers and support crews working so incredibly hard to achieve this goal,” the studio said in a blog post.
Players can take part in the challenge by delivering a fragile and precious cargo without sustaining any damage whatsoever. If you’re successful, you’ll earn the World of Trucks achievement and the Hope Trucker insignia cabin item.