LONDON, England – Ubisoft – one of the world’s largest video game developers – has agreed to remove a Kurdish flag from a new game after a request from the Kurdistan Regional Government.
A trailer for the game angered Kurds by associating their national flag with terrorism. A scene in the game features terrorists speaking Persian in a room with the flag of Kurdistan on the wall.
Ubisoft’s corporate communications manager Michael Burk promised to remove the flag in the final version of the game at the request of KRG’s Department of Foreign Relations.
“We understand your concerns and in no way intended to conflate the symbolism of Kurdistan’s flag with the motivations of the fictional terrorist organization depicted in the game,” Burk said.
“Splinter Cell: Blacklist” was officially announced during Microsoft's E3 press conference on June 4. The game, which will be released in the spring of 2013, is about a group of rogue nations that commit escalating terrorist attacks on the U.S.
Kurds set up a Facebook page in protest to what they saw in the trailer, declaring that they were the “biggest nation without a state, not terrorists.”
Scott Lee, an art director with Ubisoft in Toronto, said the scene was “inspired by contemporary hillside villages in rural Kurdistan. Terrorists have ousted farming villagers and utilized this naturally camouflaged town as an ideal hidden training camp. Heavily militarized details on a seemingly domestic setting was our goal.”
This depiction of the Kurdish flag raised fears among Kurds and the KRG that the game would “further contribute to the inaccurate, negative stereotypes that we already work so hard to overcome,” KRG’s letter to Ubisoft stated.
The letter also reminded game developers that the Kurds fought with coalition forces during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. “Our Peshmerga forces fought and died alongside them as allies who shared common values and a common vision, and both Americans and Westerners in general are welcomed here and celebrated by the general public as liberators and friends of our people,” KRG’s head of foreign relations, Falah Mustafa Bakir, wrote in a letter to Ubisoft.
In response to the KRG's letter, Ubisoft promised to remove the flag. A letter obtained by Rudaw states: “We are taking steps to remove the flag from the section you referenced in the final version of the game.”
The letter from Ubisoft adds, “We hope that you will accept this letter and our efforts to alter the game as evidence of respect for your flag’s symbolism to you and the people of Kurdistan.”
