Subliminal Releases Statement on Composer Silva’s Involvement in Button City

This story has been updated to include a statement from Subliminal, which was posted after the initial publish date. The title has also been updated to reflect this. 

Pedro Silva is a composer that has worked on several “cute/wholesome” games. They did the music for Ooblets, along with OMORI and the recently released Button City. They also have a history of abusive behavior that they themselves acknowledged and are seemingly trying to own up to, through a detailed apology statement released on December 26, 2020, and donations of half of their recent soundtrack proceeds–though it should be noted that the donation receipts document has not been updated since January, despite Silva’s statement promising monthly donations. 

“I want to publicly accept responsibility for the abuse I inflicted in a romantic relationship that occurred around 5 years ago,” Silva said in the statement. “While Slime Girls had already concluded as a project prior to this, for the immediate future I will not be using any of my accounts on this platform or others to promote anything. I have no intention of deleting my accounts as a way of hiding, pushing this aside with further posts or outright deleting this post.”

“Finally, I have decided to begin donating 50% of any profit I make from the recent soundtrack releases that have been the primary focus of my professional work for the last 4 years such as OMORI and Ooblets. These donations will be made on a monthly basis to charities in support of abuse victims (details below). Effective as soon as those profits are received, for as long as I can financially afford it.”

🎧 MUSIC PREVIEW
🍓🤖 Fruit Circuits by @pSilva_OST

🎶 Available on the Slice of Life: Songs from Wholesome Games @_wholesomegames

Preorder the Limited-edition vinyl record https://t.co/GEx7eKvMJr pic.twitter.com/r0XS2OylvG

— Button City Soccer Days 🦊 Wishlist Now! (@ButtonCity) December 13, 2020

It has been almost eight months since Silva posted these statements on the @SlimeGirls Twitter account, but the Subliminal team has not made any statements or otherwise acknowledged Silva’s involvement in the game as of the time of writing. About a week before Silva posted their statements, the Button City Twitter account tweeted a preview of the game’s music, tagging Silva’s other professional account. The bio of this account includes Button City currently. 

Subliminal’s website states that the studio is “compassionate, cute, and diverse,” and only lists three team members: art director/co-founder Shandiin Woodward, programmer/co-founder Ryan Woodward, and 3D artist Valentina Hawes. There is no mention of Silva anywhere on the sites for Subliminal or Button City. 

As pointed out by another games composer, Christa Lee: “It’s understandable to be 8 months out from ship and unable to re-score the game so quickly but it is *not* understandable to say nothing about it and hope it’ll go by unnoticed.”

i feel like it's understandable to be 8 months out from ship and unable to re-score the game so quickly but it is *not* understandable to say nothing about it and hope it'll go by un-noticed

— christa lee (@OhPoorPup) August 11, 2021

The silence on Subliminal’s part is starting to get louder, as even their colleagues at Wholesome Games have indicated that some kind of statement should be coming soon. When approached for comment on the situation by Uppercut, Matt from Wholesome Games said “my understanding is that they do plan on addressing this issue. I’m going to wait until then before commenting myself because I don’t have the details on how their working relationship with Pedro did or did not progress after the allegations.”

Uppercut reached out to Subliminal for comment via both email and Twitter DM, but have not heard back at the time of publication. 

On August 17, Subliminal posted the following statement on their Twitter account:

“Pedro Silva aka ‘Slime Girls’ worked as a freelance musician for Button City. We hired them beginning in mid-2019 without knowing them personally, only their work on Spotify. When we first learned of their toxic behavior alongside everyone else, we immediately paused work with them. As a small indie team on a shoestring budget, we unfortunately didn’t have time or money to replace their music.

Prior to the release of Button City we severed ties with Pedro, decided not to release the Button City OST, and to not work with them on any future projects. No money from sales of Button City go towards Pedro.

We were advised to not engage with social media on the matter as we were told it could lead to harassment of our team members. Since we’re a small team we didn’t want to risk that and honestly that’s been a major fear for us ever since we started making games.”