Bethesda Is Under Fire After Its Official Account Posted a Controversial ‘Good Kitty’ Meme Allegedly Tied to Outrage Over the Charlie Kirk Assassination
Microsoft’s gaming empire is in chaos as both Bethesda and Blizzard employees are accused of celebrating political violence online.
Summary
- Bethesda deleted a smug ‘good kitty’ tweet after backlash over mocking outrage to the Charlie Kirk assassination controversy.
- Blizzard and Bethesda employees linked to posts celebrating or justifying political violence, sparking major Microsoft PR crisis.
- Gamers call for boycotts of Bethesda, Xbox, and Game Pass, accusing the company of supporting toxic behavior.
Gamers are furious with Bethesda again, but this time it’s not because of bugs, half-baked launches, or the usual Todd Howard meme cycle.
It’s because the company’s official account allegedly decided to lean into a tone-deaf, smug response to a wave of outrage over political violence, only to quickly delete it once the backlash got too hot.
Related
The whole mess ties into a wider storm hitting Microsoft’s gaming empire, including Blizzard, Bethesda, and everything else under the Xbox banner.
What should have been an easy corporate PR cleanup job somehow spiraled into a self-inflicted disaster.
Blizzard’s mess spreads
The latest uproar started with Blizzard employees. In the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, threads surfaced showing Blizzard staff allegedly celebrating the act online.
Some of them didn’t just make edgy jokes, they went as far as openly advocating for political violence.
One example that made the rounds: a Blizzard technical artist posting “Kill your local MAGA” back in 2023.
After the Kirk news, multiple staffers were caught reposting, joking, and signaling approval of the attack.
Ten names floated up across different posts and screenshots.
For a company the size of Blizzard, ten employees is technically a “small subset,” as Microsoft later called it.
But that phrasing felt like corporate spin, especially when all of this was happening on professional accounts directly tied to the company.
Not burner accounts, not vague “likes,” but employees with “Blizzard” in their bios posting about death and violence.
Microsoft eventually made a statement, but only after days of online pressure. The carefully worded PR note said they were “reviewing each individual situation” and stressed that celebrating violence was “unacceptable.”
On paper, it looked fine. In practice, it came across like damage control on autopilot.
And that’s where Bethesda enters the picture. 👇
Bethesda pours gas on it
Instead of staying quiet, Bethesda allegedly made the baffling choice to mock the outrage.
When people began highlighting a Bethesda producer who had posted allegedly celebratory takes about Kirk’s assassination, jokes about ordering fancy takeout, crab-rave memes, and reposts calling him a white supremacist, gamers naturally turned to Bethesda’s official account to ask what the company planned to do.
Tap the image below to zoom in 👇
The answer? Well, a smug post captioned “good kitty” paired with a screenshot from the Indiana Jones DLC.
The image featured the line,
“You don’t care much about these fascists, do you?”
Yes, really. Bethesda allegedly responded to a real-world assassination debate and customer outrage with a snarky meme from their own game DLC.
The reaction was immediate.
Outrage snowballs
Fans and critics alike lit up the replies.
- “Fire this person or face consequences.”
- “Bethesda, this was your official reply after everything that happened last week? You’ve shown us your true colors.”
- “Don’t support Xbox. Don’t support Bethesda. Don’t support Game Pass.”
Others didn’t hold back:
“Your company is populated with people who clearly hate me and people like me. I’ll never buy another Bethesda game ever.”
The anger wasn’t just political. A chunk of the community saw the smug post as proof Bethesda no longer respects its audience.
Even long-time fans joked that the company “hasn’t made a game worth playing since Skyrim” and that the studio is more concerned with posturing on social media than fixing its games.
The “good kitty” post didn’t last long. Bethesda deleted it once the replies started piling up, but the screenshots were everywhere within minutes.
This wasn’t just about one employee or one deleted tweet. It hit harder because Bethesda and Microsoft have spent years cultivating the image of being “for the players.”
They market themselves as friendly, inclusive, and community-driven, while at the same time, their employees are seen making extreme posts with zero pushback.
Combine that with Bethesda’s rough track record (remember Fallout 76’s nylon bag scandal, paid mods, or the Starfield hype crash?), and the smug tone hit like a slap in the face.
The perception wasn’t just “Bethesda has a toxic employee.” It became “Bethesda as a company thinks this is funny.”
And when the official account leans into that vibe, even for just a few hours, it confirms every suspicion people already had.
The easy out they ignored
What makes this even more frustrating for gamers is how easily Bethesda could have diffused the situation.
All they needed to do was issue the standard corporate line:
- condemn violence,
- distance themselves from the post,
- say an intern hit send by mistake,
- and move on.
It’s PR 101. But instead, Bethesda doubled down on smugness, and now the story is everywhere.
A single tweet from a gold-check account with 2.5 million followers can’t be brushed off as an accident
You can’t allegedly make a snide meme about fascists in response to an assassination controversy and expect people to just laugh it off.
And yet, Bethesda hasn’t followed up with any clarification. No apology. No “we condemn this.” Just silence.
Microsoft
The silence might be part of the problem. Microsoft owns Bethesda now, and also owns Blizzard, which is dealing with the exact same accusations of employees celebrating violence online.
From the outside, it looks like a cultural problem across Microsoft’s studios.
Employees feel emboldened to say whatever they want, even violent things, under their official accounts without fear of discipline.
The fact that so many of them do it so openly suggests they expect zero consequences.
This puts Microsoft in a bind. On one hand, cracking down could spark internal backlash and accusations of censorship.
On the other, ignoring it risks alienating customers who see the company shrugging at what looks like calls for political violence.
It’s not exactly a great look for the company that wants everyone to subscribe to Game Pass and view Xbox as the “safe, friendly” brand.
Legal angles
Some critics are even pushing for OSHA complaints, arguing that if employees feel unsafe working alongside colleagues who openly advocate violence, Microsoft could be legally required to act.
Oh boy, it seems that this is more than just a Twitter drama. The fallout could spill into actual workplace disputes and legal obligations.
And if that happens, Microsoft will have to do more than just issue vague statements about “small subsets of employees.”
The Bethesda incident is just the latest in a long line of corporate PR failures in gaming.
Companies that spend millions crafting “community first” images keep getting exposed by their own staff, or worse, by their own official accounts.
It doesn’t matter if it’s Blizzard’s harassment scandals, Ubisoft’s leadership crises, or now Bethesda’s allegedly smug response to outrage over political violence, the pattern is the same:
- executives stay quiet,
- community managers scramble,
- and the damage festers online.
So how much this matters to Microsoft?
Will they risk alienating a slice of their audience to protect staff who post like this?
Or will they finally draw a line?
Right now, silence speaks louder than any press release.
Steam moderators also banned players from the Battlefield 6 community hub for mentioning Odet’s Charlie Kirk comments.
