Honkai: Star Rail fans want Moze and Sunday VAs replaced

Here’s what’s going on

HoYoverse

Update (July 25, 2024): Moze's voice actor has decided to step down from his role with HoYoverse announcing that his lines will be replaced in future updates.

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Original (July 22, 2024): The Honkai: Star Rail community is in a bit of an uproar right now – not because of any problem with the game itself, mind you. The current drama gripping the game’s community began with a drip marketing post by HoYoverse in the previous week, which revealed the 4-Star character Moze for update 2.5 and his English VA.

Moze is voiced by Chris Niosi, who has admitted to sexual and mental abuse of several victims in the past. “My name is Christopher Niosi; also known as Kirbopher. I am 30 years old and for about half of my lifetime, I have horribly mistreated and abused friends, colleagues and even my significant others,” he wrote in a post dated July 2019. In November 2020, Niosi claimed to “do absolutely everything within my power to make amends to those affected by my past behavior.”

However, some of his victims claimed that they’ve never actually heard from Niosi, be it to make amends or even a simple apology, casting in doubt the sincerity of his statements.

Fans, naturally, aren’t happy about someone with Niosi’s – apparently unresolved – history being picked for a role and demanded that he be replaced. However, several colleagues came to his defense, citing his public apologies and asking players to give him a second chance – which would be completely fair and reasonable, were there not contradicting evidence that calls the sincerity of these apologies into question.

Some of Niosi’s previous defenders, such as Alejandro Saab, who plays a big role in all three of HoYoverse’s flagship games, have changed their mind after receiving new information and said that they regretted defending him based on misleading claims.

Chris Niosi was revealed as the voice of Moze, an upcoming 4-Star character for HSR. / HoYoverse

What blew the controversy into stratospheric proportions was Griffin Puatu, who voices Sunday in HSR, making a post on Reddit in which he defended Niosi and appeared to blame the victims for the current controversy. “If the people hurt by Chris believe he is undeserving of forgiveness, or that he hasn't changed at all, then that's on them,” he wrote.

In an update to his post, he clarified that this was not his intention: “First, I am NOT blaming the victims for anything. All I said is that it's on them whether or not to forgive Chris or believe he's changed for the better. However, I don't believe they get to decide whether he works again or not.”

While users generally agreed with Puatu’s principal sentiment – that people who’ve genuinely owned up to mistakes and changed for the better should be given a second chance – his post seemingly ignoring victim statements and putting blame on them (even if unintentionally so) has in turn led to calls of him being fired from his involvement in HSR as well. Indeed, his post led to a bit of a Streisand Effect, making larger waves than the initial controversy itself.

Developer Ravenstar Games, which worked with Puatu on the virtual novel Lost in Limbo, already dropped him in light of these events.

This is not HoYoverse’s first rodeo with VA drama: In 2023, the company replaced Elliot Gindi, the voice actor for Genshin Impact character Tighnari, due to sexual misconduct allegations. Later in the year voice actors for Genshin Impact publicly claimed that they hadn’t received payment for their work, which was found to be the fault of the recording studio handling affairs. Given the general hands-off approach when it comes to hiring and handling the voice talents in its games, it’s probable that HoYoverse itself was blindsided by this entire controversy.

HoYoverse has not commented on these recent events yet and a representative of the company told us they’d provide more information once it’s available as a response to our inquiries.