"Our goal is not to push a particular agenda": Ubisoft CEO tries to appease players who can't stop getting angry about a black samurai in Assassin's Creed Shadows

Assassin's Creed Shadows is one of the most anticipated games of the year, but it's also controversial among some groups of gamers because it features Yasuke, a black samurai. In today's surprise announcement of a delay to Assassin's Creed Shadows, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot addressed what he called those “polarized comments,” saying that Ubisoft's games aren't meant to reflect any particular agenda.

“I want to reiterate that we are a company that puts entertainment first and develops games for the widest possible audience. Our goal is not to push a particular agenda,” Guillemot said in today's financial update. “We remain committed to developing games for fans and players that are fun for everyone.”

This is quite a change in tone from Guillemot's words in June, when he denounced “malicious and personal online attacks” against Ubisoft employees or partners.

“I want to make it clear that we at Ubisoft strongly condemn these hateful acts, and I encourage the rest of the industry and players to denounce them as well,” Guillemot said at the time. “I am proud to support the great work of our teams and partners, and I will always trust their creative decisions.”

In contrast, today's explanation is unhelpful at best and borders on cowardice in my opinion. The backlash against Assassin's Creed Shadows has been fierce, but it also comes from a very small part of the gaming community, a group that very Agenda-Driven: It makes absolutely no sense that traveling through the magic of the Animus to destroy the Pope or do George Washington a favor is normal in video games, but a black samurai – based on a historical figure, like so many others in the series – is beyond good and evil. This disingenuous crowd cannot be appeased with empty claims that it's fun and games and we should all just get along.

The most vocal group of Yasuke critics want nothing less than the complete removal of the character from the game and his replacement with an “authentic” Japanese character. This is utter madness, and anyone who thinks they can make this group happy with this harmless nonsense only needs to look at the reactions to the X delay announcement to be quickly dissuaded from such notions.

This isn't Ubisoft's first attempt to appease the eternally offended, but it's had little success. In July, the company issued a statement saying that Assassin's Creed Shadows is not intended to be a “factual representation of history or historical figures” and that “while Yasuke is portrayed as a samurai in Assassin's Creed Shadows, we recognize that this is a subject of debate and discussion.” As we noted at the time, the new Assassin's Creed has faced some legitimate criticism, but defending Yasuke is entirely unnecessary—and worse, it has helped embolden the reactionary group of gamers who think that diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts somehow ruin games.

Assassin's Creed Shadows executive producer Marc-Alexis Côté went even further in June when he called out X owner Elon Musk for stirring up “hate” about the game. Côté also wisely didn't respond to Musk's tweet about Assassin's Creed Shadows, saying, “By attacking someone like Elon… I'm not going to convince people of our point of view as a team.”

I can't speak from the perspective of a video game manager, but in my opinion, this is the approach that works. Ubisoft will never satisfy its worst, most nasty critics, and shouldn't waste time trying: the effort would be much better spent drawing clear lines, even on a point as simple as “racist nonsense will not be tolerated.” It's entirely doable: Bethesda Softworks consciously embraced anti-Nazi politics in Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus, saying, “This is what our game is about.”

Unfortunately, Ubisoft doesn't have a great history in this regard. Executives at the company that gave us The Division (anonymous agents from a previously secret Homeland Security unit respond to a devastating pandemic in New York City by killing truckloads of civilians), Ghost Recon Wildlands (an American hit team infiltrates a third-world country to overthrow the government), and Far Cry 5 (a Christian fundamentalist cult takes over a piece of remote Montana and only heavily armed locals can stop them) have insisted multiple times over the years that their games aren't political—and if they are, they're politically neutral. Viewed in that light, Guillemot's statement is really just more of the same, and will have roughly the same impact—namely, none at all.

“Our goal is not to push a particular agenda”: Ubisoft CEO tries to appease players who can't stop getting angry about a black samurai in Assassin's Creed Shadows

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