Apparently fixing games following complaints from a community is only acceptable when it’s “progressive” or the so-called “marginalized” folks doing the complaining. Ubisoft took to the official forums to announce that they would be changing a cutscene and some dialogue in the Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey DLC called Shadow Heritage after the LGBTQ community complained about Kassandra hooking up with a man and having a baby at the end of the DLC.

On January 24th, 2019 a community manager made the following statement in the forums…

“After hearing player feedback and discussing within the development team we are making changes to a cutscene and some dialogue in Shadow Heritage to better reflect the nature of the relationship for players selecting a non-romantic storyline. These changes, along with renaming a trophy/achievement, are being made now and will be implemented in an upcoming patch. “We’ve also been carefully looking at the next episode, Bloodline, to ensure the paths that players experience mirror the choices they make in game.”

After making the post on the Steam forums, GLAAD, an organization supporting the LGBTQ community, was quick to go on Twitter to thank Ubisoft for making the change.

We are pleased that Ubisoft has listened to LGBTQ players and will be making changes to Assassin’s Creed. This is an important first step toward mitigating the damage done by the game’s latest DLC. https://t.co/2l5CeXI3JV — GLAAD (@glaad) January 25, 2019

The “damage” they’re referring to is how gays and lesbians (but mostly lesbians) hated how Kassandra ended up with a man in the game in order to create the offspring that would eventually become the lineage that would lead up to Altair, and eventually Desmond Miles, the protagonist from the original Assassin’s Creed trilogy.

Genealogy isn’t something that the LGBTQ community was very fond of, though, and various individuals were enraged that Kassandra had to get with a man to get pregnant (or that Alexios had to impregnate a woman) in order to continue that lineage .

ResetEra linked to a now deleted post on the official Assassin’s Creed sub-reddit, where a lesbian gamer ranted that the decision to make Kassandra get pregnant was “corrective rape”, writing…

“[…] Lesbians across the world are subject to what is known as “corrective rape” in order to make us straight. I know another lesbian who was raped for this very reason. It wasn’t a corrective rape ordered by the government or at the behest of a tyrannical religious family, but by regular guys they knew from around. They joked, “You’re straight now, bitch.” Entertainment media contribute to this and Ubisoft joined them. “Ubisoft’s games are played around the world by young impressionable men who’ll take this and add this to their memory bank. I wouldn’t have bought the game if I knew this was going to play out this way because I don’t finance my own oppression or that of others. I don’t finance my own humiliation or that of other groups. Ubisoft, by flat out lying, made me an accomplice to compulsory heterosexuality and dangerous media tropes. […] “[…]I wanted some new cool armor from this DLC but I got a baby and a life with Natakas instead. I was so looking forward to the DLC and NG+. Now the fucking thing is ruined. I feel dirty just playing it.”

Dang, and they say our rants are hyperbolic.

Anyway, this feedback affected Ubisoft and they decided to cave.

The response from the media about this outrage has been decided different from when gamers usually complain about things like anti-consumer loot boxes, or BioWare failing to uphold their end of the bargain by including actual, distinct endings to Mass Effect 3, or even not liking poorly made mobile cash-ins based on established IPs like Diablo.











Oh, but when the GLAAD Gestapo and the Pride Prachanda take aim at a game developer and demand change, it’s for the betterment of mankind.

The Ubisoft forum thread is filled with people thanking Ubisoft for addressing the change. The GLAAD tweet is also filled with plenty of praise as well, but thankfully some of the non-affected members of the LGBTQ community spoke up to tell GLAAD that they were full of it.

“The damage done by the game’s latest DLC” Grow up. I’m LGBTQ and if you’re damaged in any way by a game’s story then you need to re-assess your mental maturity level asap. — Tessa (@TheBardess) January 25, 2019

Someone else also hopped into the thread to point out that had Kassandra and Alexios not procreated then there would be no genetic lineage for anyone to follow since Altair and the rest of the Assassins never could have come to be if there was no DNA link leading up to the modern day.

donate the genetic code, which still means that lesbian cassandra and gay guy cause I don’t know his name HAD to have had a child, period. Or no one would have had their genetic data to give to Abstergo. — Aki B (@darkmikasonfire) January 25, 2019

This kind of common sense is lost on a community and a company too wrapped up in sociopolitical appeasement to focus on telling an intriguing story.

But Ubisoft have only themselves to blame for creating such a silly narrative web where they wrote themselves into a corner by trying to develop a choice-driven prequel to an already established lore.

It’s one of the most idiotic things they could have done, because no they’re trying to find ways to write themselves out of the corner without completely destroying their own property’s mythology.

Anyway, this is all Ubisoft’s fault for entertaining the crazies in the Social Justice community instead of trying to make a cohesive and well-rounded story that actually fleshes out the franchise’s rich lore.

(Thanks for the news tip KIA)

(Main image courtesy of grechie)