Pierre-Louis Biojout, founder of Y Combinator-backed AI startup NanoCorp, took heat from San Francisco residents and city leaders this week after publishing a weekend vibe coding project: a web-based shooter set in SF’s Tenderloin district, which is known for homelessness and open drug use.
“San Francisco couldn’t fix the Tenderloin,” Biojout said in a now-deleted X post on October 13. “So I monetized it [as a] Call of Duty style zombie shooter on the real SF streets.” He noted that he’d already made $300 from in-game ads.
The game, called Tenderloin Night Shift, had players shoot “zombies” that, according to reports from the SF Chronicle and KRON4 news, included a “folded” fentanyl addict and a Black security guard.
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Speaking to the Chronicle, Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the SF Coalition on Homelessness, said that Biojout was “monetizing the dehumanization and pretend killing for fun of mostly Black and Brown residents of the poorest neighborhood in San Francisco.”
In a correspondence with the paper, Biojout said that he had not intended to “provoke or to depict shooting real people” and that the game also included tech workers as characters.
Tenderloin Night Shift appears to have been removed from NanoCorp’s website. Although Biojout deleted his X post, the discourse that ensued remains.
“You made a game about shooting people in active addiction,” said another tech founder. “These are human beings, not zombies. show me the positive side of this – i’m probably blind.”
“Why are you talking about addiction? It’s a zombie shooter,” Biojout said in response.
Some commenters, however, expressed approval for the message Biojout has disavowed. “They are currently NOT human beings,” said one user, while another said they’d “train in bro’s game” to prepare to visit San Francisco.