A screenshot from Assassin’s Creed Shadows (2024), Ubisoft
French video game developer Ubisoft ran to The New York Times in order to attack its own players in an attempt to salvage its upcoming Assassin’s Creed Shadows game.
A screenshot from Assassin’s Creed Shadows (2024), Ubisoft
In a play straight out of Prime Video’s playbook for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, Ubisoft leveraged Zachary Small and The New York Times as well as a so-called expert to attack players ahead of the release of Assassin’s Creed Shadows.
If you recall back in February 2022, Rings of Power executives worked with Vanity Fair writers Anthony Breznican and Joanna Robinson to attack fans of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings knowing that what they had created was an abomination.
Sophia Nomvete as Princess Disa in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2022), Amazon Studios
First, the duo wrote, “When Amazon released photos of its multicultural cast, even without character names or plot details, the studio endured a reflexive attack from trolls—the anonymous online kind.”
Then they cited a woman named Maria Rios Maldonado, who they described as a Tolkien scholar. However, she is anything but. Rather she was a PhD student at the University of Glasgow who “is interested in ethics, feminist theory, and encountering the Other in Tolkien’s works.”
She also happened to be “the Equality and Diversity Officer for the University of Glasgow’s Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic.”
Cynthia Addai-Robinson as Queen Regent Míriel, Ismael Cruz Córdova as Arondir, and Charlie Vickers as Halbrand in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2022), Amazon Studios
She was used by Vanity Fair to attack Tolkien fans and imply they are racist for simply wanting a lore accurate adaptation.
Maldonado questioned, “Obviously there was going to be push and backlash, but the question is from whom? Who are these people that feel so threatened or disgusted by the idea that an elf is Black or Latino or Asian?”
Tanya Moodie as Gundabel in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2024), Amazon MGM Studios
Ubisoft has done something similar with The New York Times and Small. Like Breznican and Robinson, Small wrote, “Some gamers erupted over his appearance, convinced that the franchise, known for its immersive recreations of the past, had “gone woke” by including a Black character in its depiction of 16th-century Japan.”
He then claims that “developers received personal attacks and death threats during an online harassment campaign.” To no surprise he shares no evidence of such attacks or threats.
A screenshot from Assassin’s Creed Shadows (2024), Ubisoft
After attacking gamers, Small then weaves a false narrative that has already been refuted for months by citing historian Yu Hirayama, who is an admitted communist.
Small cites Hirayama’s claim that it was without question that Yasuke was a samurai, “There are very few historical documents about him, but there’s no doubt that he was a ‘samurai’ who served Nobunaga.”
Yu Hirayama on X
However, it is highly disputed that he was a samurai as historian Yūichi Goza, who is a faculty member of the International Research Center for Japanese Studios focusing on Japanese medieval history and the author of “What is a Samurai?“, speculated that Yasuke was simply Oda Nobunaga’s bodyguard and entertainer rather than a Samurai.
He was asked by Japanese website The Sankei Shimbun, “What kind of person was Yasuke, and was he a samurai or not?”
Goza responded, “There are very few historical records about Yasuke, so it is difficult to say. The history of Yasuke has not been the subject of much research, in part because the history of personalities is not the main stream of historical studies. In the 15-volume ‘Nobunaga Koki’ in the collection of the Sonkei Kaku Bunko, which is one of the biographies of ‘Nobunaga Koki,’ a chronicle of Nobunaga’s life, there is a description of Nobunaga giving Yasuke a sword and a house, indicating that he treated him as a samurai. However, this is something that only appears in this biography among the dozens of manuscripts of the Nobunaga Chronicle, and we cannot deny the possibility that it was added later when the manuscript was transcribed.”
Goza continued, “Also, even if he was a samurai, he may have been a ‘formality. For example, in the Edo period, feudal lords who were fond of sumo had their own personal wrestlers. Formally, they were treated as vassals or samurai and allowed to wear a sword, but even if a war broke out, it was not expected that the feudal lords would allow their retainers to fight on the battlefield.”
A screenshot from Assassin’s Creed Shadows (2024), Ubisoft
Not only did Small cite the communist Hirayama, but like Vanity Fair with Maldonado he cited Kazuma Hashimoto, who he describes as “a Japanese consultant and translator in the video game industry.”
Hashimoto told Small, “It was people in the West who were upset with seeing Yasuke as a samurai.”
A screenshot from Assassin’s Creed Shadows (2024), Ubisoft
This is patently false and makes absolutely no sense given Small even admits that Ubisoft apologized to Japanese players. Small wrote, “After the online blowback, the game’s development team attempted to assuage concerns about the game’s authenticity, apologizing in a lengthy statement for promotional materials that it said had bothered some Japanese audiences.”
In fact, he even noted that a “political party in Japan formally asked the government to comment on what it considered historical inaccuracies.”
A screenshot from Assassin’s Creed Shadows (2024), Ubisoft
Japanese YouTuber Shoehi Kondo also explained a number of reasons why Japanese gamers are opposing the game and have signed a petition calling for Ubisoft to cease development on it.
He said, “We are protesting marketing DEIs, historical distortion stemming from their disregard for Asians and their arrogance, and discriminatory responses to protest from Japan.”
From there, he focuses his video on what he describes as “the biggest attempt to distort history Japan, that is the legendary Samurai, they claim, Yasuke.”
What do you make of Ubisoft running to The New York Times for this hit piece against its own players and potential players?
