Five Nights At Freddy’s creator Scott Cawthon has announced that he is retiring and will be passing control of the series to someone else in the future.
The announcement was made on Cawthon’s personal site, where he said: “I’ve had a blessed, fulfilling, and rich career. I’ve been shown great kindness, and I’ve tried to show great kindness in return.”
In the post, Cawthon also says that the Five Nights At Freddy’s franchise won’t be ending, responded to the idea that the series would be ending by saying “No.” before clarifying that “someone else will eventually be running the show; someone of my choosing, and someone that I trust.”
Five Nights At Freddy’s was first released in 2014. The series became increasingly popular over the years and currently has nine mainline titles and three spin-offs. A tenth mainline title, Five Nights At Freddy’s: Security Breach, is planned for release later this year.
This statement comes after fans criticised Cawthon when it was revealed he had donated large sums of money to a slate of Republican PACs (alongside a donation to Democrat Tulsi Gabbard), including former president Donald Trump.
Members of the LGBTQ+ community, in particular, criticised Cawthon’s donations, as they believed the donations ran counter to the values Cawthon has expressed in the past (The Five Nights At Freddy’s fanbase has a large LGBTQ+ contingent).
Cawthon responded to the criticisms in a Reddit post on June 13, saying: “I’ve debated greatly how best to address this, including not addressing it at all, but with so many people from the LGBT community in the fanbase that I love, that’s not an option.”
He continued, saying: “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 do(x)xed, with people threatening to come to my house.”
Towards the end of his statement, Cawthon said: “If people think I’m doing more harm than good now, then maybe it’s better that I get cancelled and retire.”
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