The developer of a zombie game set in San Francisco has taken down the game and issued a public apology after city officials condemned the title for depicting its citizens as ‘zombies.’
Tenderloin Night Shift was a vibe-coded, first-person shooter created by independent developer Pierre-Louis Biojout over the course of a weekend using OpenAI’s Codex. As you’ve probably inferred by its title, the game takes place in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood, an area infamous for its high crime rates and unhoused population that’s often compared offhandedly to Los Angeles’s Skid Row.
In the game, players use a gun to rid the Tenderloin of ‘zombies.’ Some of these undead enemies wear construction uniforms or whiz by on motorized scooters, while others wear food delivery backpacks, having clearly been infected while on the job. Still others are depicted doing the ‘fentanyl fold,’ a position where the body is bent forward at the waist, most usually displayed by fentanyl users who seem to have been frozen while standing upright.
“San Francisco couldn’t fix the tenderloin, so I monetized it,” Biojout said on social media. In the game, he sold digital ad space for $100 per week, which accounts for some of the real-world companies seen on billboards within his polygonal recreation of the neighborhood.
It didn’t take long for San Francisco city officials to take notice of the title. Speaking to NCB Bay Area, Mayor Daniel Lurie said, “There’s no accounting for taste or people’s terrible ideas. This is a bad one, and we reject it. It doesn’t speak for San Francisco values.”
In a statement to the San Francisco Chronicle, Supervisor Bilal Mahmood, who represents the Tenderloin, dubbed the game “deeply disturbing and unacceptable.”
“Turning violence against real people, including unhoused people, into entertainment is dehumanizing and should never be normalized,” he said. “I’m encouraged to see that the majority of San Franciscans recognize that this crosses a line and refuse to stand for it.”
While Biojout was previously boasting about the backlash on his social media accounts, he later removed the game from his online platform and issued a public apology over how his project depicted San Francisco’s citizens. He also revealed that he’d been inspired by an Alcatraz-themed Call of Duty map and said he often passes by the Tenderloin on his way to work.
“The game was not intended to provoke or to depict shooting real people. Its characters draw on a broad cross-section of San Francisco, across different backgrounds and walks of life, including people who work in tech. The familiar city details and Easter eggs are part of what makes it fun to play with friends,” he told the Chronicle.
Speaking to NBC Bay Area, Bijout said, “It was not intended to depict shooting real people or to target a particular demographic or group.”
Additionally, Biojout revealed that he refunded advertisers who promoted his game and removed all of his social media posts about it. He also donated the game’s total revenue to the Delancey Street Foundation, a nonprofit organization based in San Francisco that provides rehabilitation services and vocational training to convicted criminals and those suffering from substance abuse.
“I built and posted a zombie game set on San Francisco streets. The setting and the way I promoted it showed poor judgment. Targeting people struggling with addiction or homelessness was never my intention,” he wrote on Twitter/X.
The game was available on Biojout's NanoCorp AI website, a platform that runs online businesses using AI agents. It has since been removed, and the page is no longer available at the time of writing.
Image Credits: plbiojout