Chuchel

Controversy

In a December 21, 2018 update, the developers changed the main character's appearance: from a black hairball with an orange hat, Chuchel became an orange hairball in a black hat. The reason stated was that the black Chuchel with prominent lips could be seen to resemble a racist blackface caricature. Quoting the original announcement on Steam:

In reaction to a number of requests we’ve seen coming from the players throughout the year, we ultimately decided to swap Chuchel’s colours and change his body colour from black to orange. We acknowledge that due to significant differences in culture and history between Central Europe and other regions, we did not consider the possibility of Chuchel, a living dust bunny, being associated with ‘blackface’, a theatrical racial stereotype which emerged in the United States in the 19th century.

We would like to sincerely apologize to anyone who has been offended by the original appearance of Chuchel. As a team of peace-minded creative people, we simply do not want any of our games and characters even remotely associated with racism or any other form of hate crime. In order to avoid any further misinterpretations, Chuchel’s appearance has just been updated here on Steam and will be changed on all platforms in the upcoming days and weeks.

The change met with a highly negative reception from Steam customers, who accused the developers of caving to "SJWs" and bombed the game's store page with negative reviews.