Ubisoft is an international company that creates video games and is most known for the Assassin’s Creed Series.
They have often subtly pushed a leftist agenda, but it has never been seriously overt.
However, this time, they may have ticked off an entire country and crashed their stock.
One of the things that makes these games so popular is that they usually occur during cool moments of history. The series has had games take place during the American Revolution, The Crusades, Mid-Evil Italy, the French Revolution, and Egypt during the time of Cleopatra.
The latest game is taking place in the Edo period of Japan. The two main characters are a Japanese woman and a black man.
The black character’s name is “Yasuke,” a real-life figure who served under the warlord Nobunaga.
At face value a historical black figure living during that period as the main character isn’t a big deal but the Japapanese people are not happy.
Japanese gamers (and there are a lot of them) are upset they finally get an Assassin’s Creed game in their country and the main character isn’t one of them.
From Redstate:
as Japanese people pointed out, they finally get an Assassin’s Creed game set in their country and the main character isn’t one of them. Again, if the roles were reversed, and it took place in Africa and your character was a white or Asian man, then there would be an outcry about representation and endless accusations of racism toward the developers.
Japanese gamers are pointing out where Ubisoft has gone very wrong with everything, and not just the main character.
Let’s see how well-received the latest stunning and brave Assassin’s Creed Shadows is in Japan. I’m sure things are going to be fin… omg 🫨 😆 pic.twitter.com/bJVZziuKxw
— LearningTheLaw (@Mangalawyer) May 15, 2024
A Forbes article recently reported that wikipedia is now feveriously editing their article about Yasuke to come in line with the game.
From Forbes:
In addition, a massive edit war has erupted over on Wikipedia about Yasuke himself, which isn’t exactly helpful either. It also shows that this is clearly a contentious issue and one that people aren’t happy about in terms of history being “rewritten”.
Again, the issue Japanese people have is not with “Yasuke” is that these games have also retained “a degree of fidelity to historical events” and represented the people of “that locale and period” consistent with history.
Japanese Reception from Ubisoft’s latest videogame, Assassin’s Creed Shadows.
One Japanese user says: “For the first time I understood what cultural Appropriation was”
Very diverse neo-colonialist we have here 💀 pic.twitter.com/SDnyudjuup
— LearningTheLaw (@Mangalawyer) May 16, 2024
Below is the lead writer for the new game.
Hey everyone, let’s not be too hard on Assassin’s Creed Shadows. I’m sure their writers genuinely respect Japanese culture and wouldn’t try to appropriate it. And besides, it’s not like they’re the same folks who messed up Greek history in the past.
Oh no💀 pic.twitter.com/VrdK6IkHg7
— LearningTheLaw (@Mangalawyer) May 15, 2024
Another thing of note is the image below of Ubisoft stock after the game trailer was released on May 15, 2024.
