Ever since the French publisher revealed that an African samurai named Yasuke would be one of Assassin’s Creed Shadows ’ dual protagonists, a small but deranged contingent of online gamers have made the sequel a target of their reactionary ire
“That tweet generated emotions, that…the first thing I wanted to do was go back on X—that I had deleted—and just tweet back,” franchise executive producer Marc-Alexis Côté told Game File last year
French news network BFM TV now reports
Ubisoft did not directly confirm or deny the reporting when asked about the situation. “Our stance has always been that team members’ social media channels are their own,” a spokesperson for the publisher told Kotaku in an email. “Our top priority is the safety of our employees, including online, which is why, as a standard practice across Ubisoft, we offer guidance on navigating social media, digital safety, and support for team members’ well-being. We also share resources to help prevent and protect against online harassment, something our teams have unfortunately faced.”
Ubisoft has taken varying approaches to the culture war noise around Assassin’s Creed Shadows over the last nine months as its impending release has become more and more of an apparent make-or-break moment for the company. Last June Star Wars Outlaws , however, the executive spoke more vaguely about
A recent clapback Assassin’s Creed X account stood out all the more in that context. Kern shared and quoted a post from the account earlier this month, calling on players to boycott Shadows and dunking on the post for having comments turned off, saying, in part, “We get Ubisoft to change, the other top publishers will notice!” When the Shadows X account took the unusual step of responding, Kern’s original post was quickly ratio’d. “Thank you for considering us a top publisher!” The Assassins Creed Shadows social team replied. “While our media ads typically don’t allow comments, our regular posts do.” It was a nice reminder that lots of other people are fed up with “anti-woke” grifters, too.
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