Five Nights At Freddy’s creator retires amid fierce backlash over Donald Trump donations
Five Nights at Freddy’s. (Scott Cawthon)
Scott Cawthon, the creator of horror series Five Nights at Freddy’s, has announced his retirement.
It follows recent controversy around the game designer donating to Donald Trump and a number of anti-LGBT+ Republicans.
In a message on his personal website, Cawthon thanked fans of the series.
“I’ve had a blessed, fulfilling, and rich career,” he wrote. “I’ve been shown great kindness and I’ve tried to show great kindness in return. I’ve tried to make some good games (let the debate ensue), and I’ve witnessed the creation of possibly the most creative and talented fanbase on the planet.
“But here on the seventh anniversary of the first game’s trailer, as I realise that I was in my mid-30s when I created the series and now I’m approaching my mid-40s, I realise that I miss a lot of things that I got to focus on before FNAF became such a success.”
He continued: “All of this to say that I am retiring. I have been shown tremendous love and support over this last week, a lot of which has come from the LGBTQ community. The kindness shown to me has been surreal.”
He went on to note that this will not be the end of the Five Nights at Freddy’s series, but that it will continue under the guidance of “someone of my choosing, and someone that I trust”.
Several video games have been released in the series since it began in 2014, as well as novel and film adaptations.
Cawthon’s donations, from 2015 – 2020, include a $2,000 donation to Donald Trump, as well as a $5,000 donation to anti-LGBT+ senator Mitch McConnell.
The donations were shared in a Twitter post that soon went viral, with many LGBT+ fans upset.
Cawthon later responded on Reddit.
“I’d like to think that the last seven years would have given me the benefit of the doubt in regards to how I try to treat people, but there I was, trending on twitter for being a homophobe, getting doxed, with people threatening to come to my house,” he wrote.
“Even if there were candidates who had better things to say to the LGBT community directly, and bigger promises to make, I believed that their stances on other issues would have ended up doing much greater harm to those communities than good.”
A new game in the Five Nights at Freddy’s series is due out later this year, named Five Nights at Freddy’s: Security Breach.
This will presumably be the last with Cawthon at the helm.
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