Earlier this morning, the official Battlefield 1 Twitter account posted a number of tweets using the ridiculous hashtag #justWWIThings. Met with negative feedback, the account soon deleted the tweets.
The tweets featured animated gifs of soldiers marching and clearing out bunkers with flamethrowers. They included slogans like, “When your squad is looking on point,” and, “When you’re too hot for the club.”
Source: Holly Neilson
Some Twitter users co-opted the hashtag to post their own #justWWIThings and collectively roll their eyes at the absurd hashtag. Because there’s nothing better than dying slowly in the trenches with your pals.
This is not the first time that Battlefield 1’s marketing been met with collective groaning. After the open beta ended, the official site boasted that the digital conflict featured “More than double the strength of the British and Ottoman Empires deployed in the Middle East during World War 1”.
The official Battlefield Twitter account later posted this apology:
We apologize for any offense taken to content posted earlier. It was not at all our intent to show any lack of respect to the WW1 era.
— Battlefield (@Battlefield) October 31, 2016
And the company provided Kotaku with an official statement:
We would like to apologize for any offense caused by content in the last 24 hours posted on the @Battlefield Twitter account. It did not treat the World War 1 era with the respect and sensitivity that we have strived to maintain with the game and our communications.
I was impressed by Battlefield 1 although I had some reservations about the multiplayer that colleague Kirk Hamilton didn’t quite share. Regardless, the tone of Battlefield 1’s marketing is far different than its reverent single player campaign.
Comments
12 responses to “Battlefield Account Posts Dumbarse Tweets, Deletes Them”
#FreshInOurMemories
I lold at the burning one.
Other game companies have had their feet held to the proverbial fire for much, much lesser indiscretions. For longer periods.
Nintendo and its social media use/presence has been the subject of much debate.
Square Enix and its wishy-washy attempts at ‘saying something’ about the world we live in during the new Deus Ex game’s hype fell flat. But there was much (digital) ink spilt there.
Not even going to mention Hello Games.
Serious questions should be asked of EA, someone clearly thinks they’re in the right enough to use Peter bloody Moore’s account to tweet about onesies and doritos while spruiking a game which – as Heather points out – has been extremely “on-message” and carefully advertised until now.
Now this.
Alarmingly, IGN and Gamespot were hazing each other the other day on twitter, some sort of Site v Site bout? Clearly it was nothing but a large-scale advertisement for EA and its game, but without any of the ‘let’s treat this with the respect it deserves’ talk you get from EA itself.
It’s not that people take offense – if you were the type to take offense at these tweets, you probably would take offense at the very idea of portraying WW1 in a video game – it’s that these tweets were terribly, terribly…. lame.
Are lame jokes about tragic events that happened over 100 years ago seriously still off-limits? Ridiculous.
Over 15 million lives says no, it’s not off the table. The people that laid down their lives, have had a direct impact on the comfortable life you live today. The simple fact that you think it was over 100 years ago shows how ignorant and indifferent you are to these events. It’s not ridiculous, don’t be a d.
The hashtag in itself is offensive, #justww1things, seriously? Referencing WW1 should never be trivial or used for a quip.
God you people are too precious. WWI isn’t off-limits at all, and I’ll make as many trivial comments or quips about it as I damn well please.
Stop being offended on other (dead) people’s behalf. It’s pathetic.
Meanwhile, EA have published a game about WWI and the point of a game’s social media account is to engage with its fans. If you think engaging with fans in the exact same way that fans themselves would talk to each other is offensive then just go away. You have no business here on the internet.
Mate, you are delusional if the think that everyone is not going to be offended.
Secondly, you didn’t type the offending comment so I don’t know why you have to defend it??? But if you feel like doing so, be prepared to receive other peoples point of view on the matter.
I fail to see how being grateful and respectful to those lives sacrificed to lay the foundation for the freedoms and liberties we have today, is pathetic. But you are entitled to your own opinion, however repugnant it is.
Right, much more respectful to yell at 12-year-olds in my comfortable gaming chair and relive world war 1 all over again. Press F to pay respects
Quite shit that they apologise for the actions of others, rather than for their own disrespectful and insensitive actions. How EA hasn’t found themselves in opprobrium over the handling of this game, I don’t know.
Anyone who was genuinely offended by these tweets needs to get their head checked. Seriously people, get over yourselves. No one would bat an eyelid if these were memes posted in r/gaming, but EA posts images relevant to their game to engage their fans and all of a sudden it’s a self-righteous bandwagon hate-fest.
Like, who are the tweets insensitive to? All those non existent surviving WWI vets? Seriously…
Who cares what is being posted by some keyboard warriors in the back alley forums where you hang out, most of them are clearly depraved individuals.
This is a multinational company, and need to be called on disrespectful shit like this. They referenced WW1 in their hashtag, they would have been far better off with something like #justbattlefield1things or #justBF1things.
If you can’t see the correlation, don’t even bother speaking bud.
Marketers are so morally confused at times.