Scott Cawthon, the creator of the popular horror video game series Five Nights at Freddy’s, has said he “won’t apologise” for funding Republican politicians, including Donald Trump.
The animator and designer came under fire last week for donations to various US politicians.
As revealed by a Twitter user known as ‘Chief Imagineering Officer of Antifa’ with a screenshot of Cawthon’s public filings, Cawthon has maxed out his political donations to a number of Republican politicians from 2015 to 2020.
The donations range from $5 to $5,000, including a $2,000 donation to Donald Trump and a $5,000 donation to anti-LGBT+ senator Mitch McConnell.
“turns out scott cawthon, well-known as the creator of five nights at freddy’s and less known as being a christian fundie, maxed out his political donations to republican candidates and PACs in 2020,” reads the tweet.
The list of politicians does include Democrat Tulsi Gabbard, receiving $2,500, but as noted “if you look at her politics the picture becomes clear”.
“she’s a crypto-fash who’s allied with hindutva militias, pushes anti-trans bills and appeared on PragerU…”
Since then, Cawthon followed up on Reddit to defend his stance: “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.
“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 continued: “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.
“I’m a republican. I’m a Christian. I’m pro-life. I believe in God. I also believe in equality, and in science, and in common sense. Despite what some may say, all of those things can go together. That’s not an apology or promise to change, it’s the way it’s always been.”
Cawthon is known as an animator and game designer, not only for Five Nights at Freddy’s but a number of biblical films.
He began Five Nights at Freddy’s in 2014 and has since released several more games in the series, as well as a novel trilogy and a forthcoming film adaptation.
Owing to the success of the series, in 2020 he was estimated to have a net worth of $60 million.
A new game in the series, Five Nights at Freddy’s: Security Breach, is due out later this year on PlayStation and PC. A gameplay video was recently shown at a PlayStation State of Play presentation.
However, many gamers have responded negatively to this donation news, especially LGBT+ gamers unhappy that Cawthon has been funding politicians against LGBT+ rights. FNAF has since been trending on Twitter.
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