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Following the news earlier this week, where a piece of Destiny 2 gear looked a little too similar to an internet meme which had been repurposed by alt-right hate groups, Bungie has discussed its feelings on the incident in a blog post stating that any link was completely unintentional.
The issue resulted in the planned maintenance window being extended in order to hide the offending armour, which was originally created back in 2015, so that players could no longer equip it.
According to Bungie, the design was, ‘Initially created as part of gear foundry explorations in June of 2015,’ when it wasn’t considered to have any negative connotations. It said that designers routinely refer to art, iconography, and more from the real world, and that ‘In this case, some of the reference imagery featured the simple mirrored chevron shapes found in the finished piece.’
This design wasn’t picked upon initially as a symbol of hate, simply because it was felt that the design only referenced ‘an innocuous internet meme,’ and at the time the ‘more contemporary, vile derivation that has been repurposed by hate groups was not surfaced through this process, and therefore, the armor was approved for ship.’
‘We want everyone to know their identity is welcome in our studio and in the worlds we create. This isn’t merely a platitude, but an official pillar we hold ourselves, and our work to. It is also a clarion call for the type of people we want to bring into our studio to help us make better games.’‘We aren’t asking you for the benefit of the doubt. We know we are judged by our actions. We want to thank the members of our community, and the press, for bringing this matter to our attention.’
Bungie has said that there’ll be a patch next week, which will remove the element in question entirely from the UI icon and preview screens, taking all the assets out of the game completely.
