In a twist of irony, it’s been revealed that Sea of Stars will remove all references to Jirard, The Completionist. This follows a series of events in which the YouTuber was embroiled in allegations of charity fraud. According to the Director of Sabotage Studios, the team will launch a patch to remove the content creator from the game. This patch will be applied to both PC and console versions of Sea of Stars.
Jirard, The Completionist made a cameo appearance in the game as Jirard, The Constructionist. In the game, The Constructionist built additional facilities in Mirth. This character cameo appeared since the game was released on August 29, 2023. The appearance was made to commemorate the YouTuber’s contributions towards charity through IndieLand, an annual charity event streamed online from 2018 to 2023 that showcased gameplay from independent video games.
However, this reputation has been tarnished recently thanks to a recent slew of exposes created by Karl Jobst and SomeOrdinaryGamers. The essays brought with them allegations of charity fraud towards Jirard and his charity organization, the Open Hand Foundation. Additionally, the video essays also brought detailed accounts of inconsistencies within IndieLand’s donation routes. While Jirard made a response video toward these allegations, the response was quite poor and inconsistent.
In the end, it was decided by Sabotage Studios that Jirard’s cameo was to be removed from the game. This decision was taken after “careful consideration over the past few weeks” according to the director of the studio, Thierry Boulanger. Here’s the full statement as announced on the discord server:
“A small patch will be going live on Steam and be submitted to consoles soon to replace the builder NPC in Mirth. We arrived at this decision after carefully monitoring events over the past few weeks, and while it is not our place to pass judgment, we do make it a priority to maintain a positive and optimistic space that reflects the spirit of our intentions, be they creative or otherwise. As always, we appreciate your support and trust you to respect our decision while keeping the tone of the conversation in line with the essence of what makes our games and our community what they are. Thank you.”
Sea of Stars is currently available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam.