Ubisoft announced it will be removing the raised black fist imagery from Tom Clancy’s Elite Squad after comparisons were made between the fictional antagonist group in the game and the Black Lives Matter movement.
The 5v5 RPG mobile game consisting of heroes and villains from various Ubisoft properties, such as Splinter Cell and Rainbow Six, launched last week.
According to the game’s introduction video, the game revolves around fighting against UMBRA, a “faceless organization” that promotes the idea of “egalitarian utopia” while simultaneously orchestrating terrorist attacks and hacking social media in secret.
Fans began to criticize the game after the introduction video was uploaded to YouTube for the antagonist enemy using the raised fist imagery, commonly associated with the Black Power movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s and the more recent Black Lives Matter movement.
A senior programmer at Ubisoft’s Massive Entertainment studio tweeted about the video, calling it “gross and extremely disrespectful.”
Tom Clancy’s Elite Squad developer Owlient said on Saturday that it has listened to the community over the “insensitive and harmful” raised fist imagery and how it was portrayed and will remove it in the next title update.
Ubisoft followed up with an apology and said the imagery would be removed in the next title update on Sept. 1 for Android, and “as soon as possible” for iOS.
An update regarding Tom Clancy's Elite Squad: pic.twitter.com/G6Hb1SO7Gx
— Ubisoft (@Ubisoft) August 29, 2020
