Ubisoft published an apology for co-opting Black Lives Matter imagery and vilifying the peaceful movement in its mobile RPG, Tom Clancy's Elite Squad. The free-to-play game unites characters from six of Ubisoft's Tom Clancy franchises, including Sam Fisher from Splinter Cell, Nomad from Ghost Recon, and Montagne from Rainbow Six. Players are then pitted against a sinister organization called UMBRA.

Unfortunately, UMBRA is heavily coded as a stand-in for Black Lives Matter. Though Tom Clancy's Elite Squad is story-light, it opens with world-establishing video. The cutscene explains that UMBRA is actually a sham, casting in-game protesters as foolish pawns who unknowingly perpetuate the organization's sinister machinations. As the cutscene continues, images of the raised fist associated with Black Lives Matter moments after the Eye of Providence, a symbol often used to represent the Illuminati. Driving home the message, a gravelly voice intones, "They claim to promote and egalitarian utopia to gain popular support; while behind the scenes UMBRA organizes deadly terrorist attacks to generate even more chaos and weaken governments ... at the cost of innocent lives."

Related: Tom Clancy's Elite Squad Has A Serious Politics Problem

Following blow-back, Ubisoft posted a brief apology to its Twitter account. The company claims it listened to community feedback and pledges to remove the raised fist imagery on September 1 for Android users and "as soon as possible" for iOS players. Ubisoft did not offer additional information about whether other Black Lives Matter iconography or narrative elements would change.

Ubisoft can remove the raised fist symbol from Tom Clancy's Elite Squad but the central problem remains - the game casts players as military enforcers and pits them against a justice movement. Meanwhile, across the United States, protesters face state-sanctioned violence from local and federal forces as well as white supremacist mobs. Ubisoft trivializes the Black Lives Matter movement, and those fighting for justice by casting them as brainwashed soldiers of an anti-American menace. The game's narrative plays into the same ghoulish historical erasure as the recent Call of Duty reveal.

Political movements are not story fodder, and incorporating real-world struggles into a mobile game can cause real-world harm. Ubisoft, despite its constant appeals to apoliticism, played right into the racist, right-wing narrative surrounding Black Lives Matter.

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Source: Ubisoft/Twitter