Following recent events where publisher Board & Dice suspended all future collaboration with Daniele Tascini due to the author posting racist remarks on social media platforms, Ion Game Design has issued a public statement in response to criticism concerning the inclusion of designer footnotes and essays in rules documents of games released by the publisher.

“Essays and Footnotes in our Rules

Continued concerns with personal statements, footnotes, and essays have brought forward our work on new practices related to how we handle certain aspects of our games. While we will honor our contractual obligations regarding our game designers work, we will not continue to publish essays or non-factual footnotes in our printed or living rules. We'll continue to listen to our community and adjust and adopt new policies as necessary. Thank you for taking the time to work with us on this. We issue the following official statement:

At Ion Game Design, we condemn discrimination of any kind, be that based upon age, culture, gender identity, gender expression, social status, sexual orientation, religion, race, educational level, disability, mental health, ethnicity or physical appearance.

We have previously reprinted and published games with essays and footnotes that may conflict with our values. If so, we regret this, and we acknowledge and apologize for these mistakes and will do better going forward. We plan to begin to address the rules in the following ways:

• Rulebooks and living rules will not contain essays or any other texts other than game rules or factual footnotes.

• Footnotes will only be included if peer-reviewed by experts in the relevant fields, including sensitivity readers.

Your Ion Game Design Team

January 17, 2021”

Source: Ion Game Design