'State of Decay' Was Riddled With Hidden Male Genitalia

Making videogames for a living isn't nearly as glamorous or fun as most gamers would like to believe. The job mostly involves the tedium of poring through millions of lines of code or perfecting countless textures that make up an average videogame. Bored programmers and textures artists sometimes tend to break the monotony through easter eggs, which are hidden inside jokes buried within in the countless lines of codes or innumerable textures that make up most of what you see in a game.

Developer Undead Labs found that similar shenanigans were afoot in its Xbox zombie survival-horror game "State of Decay." The easter eggs buried within this stealth-based third-person zombie game were significantly more offensive and potentially damaging to the company's reputation than the average easter egg. Apparently, the numerous textures dotting the horizon in this open-world game contained images of male genitalia, according to VG247.

Most disturbingly, this inside joke wasn't restricted to a few odd penises camouflaged inside some textures. "State of Decay" contained a "ridiculous amount" of genitalia added into the background textures. This revelation came from Geoffrey Card, Senior Designer at Undead Labs, during an interview with XBLA Fans at the PAX East expo.

Fortunately for the developer, this flagrantly terrible example of an inside joke was never discovered by gamers. The low resolution of textures used in the XBLA version of the game was mainly responsible for the hidden genitalia to be indecipherable from the background textures that they were integrated within. Apparently, the low resolution textures were carried onto the PC port as well. As Kotaku points out, that may be the reason why PC gamers couldn't notice the inappropriate content that was merged inconspicuously into the scenery.

The penises were so well hidden into the game that even Undead Labs didn't notice them until the textures were taken up for enhancement as a part of the upcoming remaster dubbed "State of Decay: Year One Survival Edition." The developer blamed the crass move on the contractors hired to work on the tedious job of creating background textures for the open-world game. Needless to say, Game Informer has confirmed that the contractor is no longer working with the company owing to such incredible display of unprofessionalism.

This isn't the first example of inappropriate easter eggs hidden with a game. Back in 2004, Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto ran into major controversy after the infamous "Hot Coffee" mod gave players access to a hidden mini-game involving a crude sex scene, as reported by IGN. Meanwhile, gamers will be able to purchase the remastered "State of Decay: Year-One Survival Edition" on April 28 for $30 – that is, after the developer is done removing the offending genitalia.

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State of Decay: Breakdown Trailer (credit: Official Undead Labs Channel)