Bungie is changing a gauntlet in Destiny 2 that was based on an alt-right symbol, the developer said today.
Screencap of gauntlet via Reddit
“It’s come to our attention that a gauntlet in Destiny 2 shares elements with a hate symbol. It is not intentional. We are removing it,” the company said on Twitter this morning. “Our deepest apologies. This does NOT represent our values, and we are working quickly to correct this. We renounce hate in all forms.”
Although Bungie did not specify the gauntlet — and the company has not returned a request for comment — Redditors quickly discerned that the “Road Complex AA1”, pictured above, fits the bill. The design on these gloves bears a striking resemblance to the Kekistan flag, an alt-right symbol that itself is based on Nazi symbology:
Image via Southern Poverty Law Center
Although the word “kek” originated as a World of Warcraft meme, it has since been repurposed by alt-right internet denizens as a symbol of white nationalism, not unlike Pepe the Frog. As the Southern Poverty Law Center points out, alt-right protesters have carried this flag at various rallies and demonstrations.
“The banner’s design, in fact, perfectly mimics a German Nazi war flag, with the Kek logo replacing the swastika and the green replacing the infamous German red,” writes the SPLC. “Alt-righters are particularly fond of the way the banner trolls liberals who recognise its origins.”
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It’s not yet clear whether Bungie will remove the gauntlets entirely or simply alter the design.
Comments
56 responses to “Bungie Removes Destiny 2 Glove With ‘Hate Symbol’ On It”
Good. This’ll give the alt-right some new trivia to hyperventilate about.
Meanwhile, the censorious left will find some other meaningless triviality to trumpet about.
but muh feelings yo
i apologise if my mere thoughts are hurting your feeling brah.
I still don’t like the way you’ve apologised, I might DMCA you for future content.
I’m waiting for them to adopt Mr Sparkle myself. Apparently one of the translations comes out as White is Power, or something like that. Something for white supremists to leap on at any rate.
Not sure they’d see the irony.
You and @angorafish perfectly summed up the problem with the false Left vs Right dynamic.
If I were Bungie I’d ignore whining idiots who complained about this kind of stuff. Pandering to them just emboldens them to cry about anything that vaguely resembles something they don’t like.
It does’t “vaguely resemble” a Nazi flag, it is designed around a Nazi flag, specifically to look like a Nazi flag, to draw parallels to a Nazi flag.
And if it looks like a Nazi flag, it’s being used by people who base their views on Nazi’s, and it is designed for the sole purpose of drawing a visual parallel to a Nazi flag, then mate, it’s a Nazi flag.
It merely looks similar – its not even the same bloody symbol.
How come baseball games hold a K for strike outs?
What happens when they all strike out?
OMG!! KKK quick everyone, boycott baseball
“In light of the political climate, Seseme Street will no longer be brought to you by the letter K”
Came up not long ago:
https://twitter.com/Sania90/status/882427082822778880
ahahaha oh wow.
That is ridiculous, is that a legit article? i can’t access it on a work comp
Yup and when it was explained that it’s the way strikeouts are recorded she replied that they should change it because it’s offensive.
Her bio has “social justice warrior” in it, so par for the course really.
Have you considered that maybe they’re not pandering? That maybe someone at Bungie saw this and thought ‘we don’t want these idiots dragging their stupid political views into our game, so we’ll cut them off’. This is Bungie after all. They know how their playerbase can latch onto the smallest thing and they know how dumb gamers can be. They made Halo afterall.
Dont disagree, but i must downvote for bad mouthing halo
Seemed to more be badmouthing Halo fans than the game itself.
True. Which is even worse because im one of them, damn him.
Big stretch to come to that conclusion on such a small issue. Especially in the absence of any kind of indication.
https://media.giphy.com/media/GzuK6MVgBTWSI/giphy.gif
It’s Bungie’s game. If they don’t want symbols they don’t like in it, that’s perfectly reasonable.
holy wow.
while they can do what they want at the end of the day, fucking wow. overboard.
but what about the hindu’s?
Surely given this context they should scrub any reference off their temples?
Given that the swastika was also a sublte symbol adopted by scum.
You can’t have it both way mans – why is my outrage at the swastika being ignored?
Oh, because the hard left are yet to impose their beliefs and viewpoints on ancient cultures?
ISIS did that didnt they?
The hindu symbol is around the other way to what the swastika is, and I don’t recall any games having the hindu symbol in them, can you point me to any?
Your outrage to the swastika is because it’s on actual Nazis in a game, is that your issue?
dude, a swastika is a swastika – left facing or right facing.
Do some research.
and quite clearly the first comment was facetious, the second was attempting to explain the stupidity of removing something due to a minority of upset.
I couldnt give rats arse if they included swastikas, pepe the frog, whatever that bungie symbol was – my entire point is this whole situation is getting out of hand.
But this too is a case of similarity-while-not-being-the-same, just as the hindu vs nazi swastika. Seems a fair comparison to me.
Could you please stop. It’s just embarrassing. None of ‘the left’ will rise to your bait and none of ‘the right’ are going to find your arguments compelling or original.
Mucktard, You are just embarassing yourself know. You are acting like a child having a sooky la la. No one demanded this be removed. There was no outrage about the symbol. The only outrage is coming from you and your crying. No one knew about this till bungie said they were removing it.
Get over yourself you sook.
what none of you seem to understand or comprehend is just how outrageous this whole censorship all is becoming.
Being purposely sensational in comments is exactly how the other issues are handled.
Something mundane taken to the nth degree for naught.
And it was reported to Bungie – check their twitter feeds before you make claims.
They didnt self censor, they were told at length on social media.
I couldnt care where you sat on the fence, people need to treat each other with respect and that includes all those that lose their minds and claim offence because it doesnt sit in their views.
If you couldnt tell i was being facetious with regard to the direction of the swastika/hindu comment, then there is no point even talking as you have already made up your mind.
Wait… since when has Kekistan been an alt-right symbol? Isn’t its entire concept meant to deride and troll? I mean, the only reason we see it amongst right rallies and not left rallies is because the right seems to be able to take a joke whilst a violent percentage of left rallies (usually antifa) will try to destroy it.
I can understand Bungie removing it for it being semi-political (even though that political stance is trolling), but to label it alt-right? Geez…
Thank you. This guy gets it. The entire point of Kekistan is that it’s a joke with far left being the butt, and the more seriously they take it and the more they label it, the stronger the whole joke becomes.
It’s not just the far-left being the butt. IIRC the 4chan board that came up with the concept came up with the design to specifically troll both extremes. The far-right (now regarded as the alt-right) due to its design alluding to Nazi-ism, and the far-left due to their seeming need to censor anything that could offend. So no matter which side they flew the flag at in a rally it would deride “normies” that didn’t understand.
It’s being adopted by the Alt-Right, not really a symbol of the Alt-Right.
This is the problem though. You say “adopted”. Then that doesn’t mean anything. Again, the whole Kekistan thing is a giant joke and any time it’s seen it’s there to satirise. So are people saying it’s been “adopted” merely due to its presence? Could we say the same about other things? Pretty sure protesters are seen eating fast food. Do we then tie McDonalds, KFC, etc. to one side or the other purely based on presence in any form?
On top of that, this article and all statements never state association, they straight up say IS an alt-right symbol. This is just “Pepe the Frog is a White Nationalist symbol” all over again.
Ya, pretty much. It is truly sad to see the great nation of Kekistan being associated with white nationalism.
You have to remember the media and most of the general population don’t know a thing about Kekistan or it’s origins. We know what it was, what it stood for and we can ignore any extra symbolism anyone tries to attach to it. But when a flag that closely resembles a Nazi flag is waved at any political rally is going to get noticed and what meaning the media or general public ties to that symbol will be far removed from the original joke.
Your fast food analogy doesn’t work because these places already have meaning and this meaning isn’t derived from their customers or their behaviour.
Ok no, I’m sorry but what?
You state that the media & most of the population don’t know about Kekistan. But then wouldn’t the media’s job be to find out exactly what it is before making a harmful guesstimate?
Misinformation is a problem that really needs to be halted or it’s going to get people just trying to make a joke hurt.
Absolutely, but that doesn’t mean it’s symbolism can’t change, we see symbols/icons take on new definitions all the time. Star of David was used by Hinduism before Judaism, Barber Poles for bloodletting and the Swastika. For Kekistan flag this change happens a lot faster because it use in not very wide spread.
It’s not really misinformation when it’s waved at an Alt-Right protest that involves KKK members and Nazi flags. It no longer resembles a joke whether that was intended or not, you don’t have control over it’s meaning.
When did Kek become hate speech? All I’ve ever known it to be is the Alliance to Horde translation of Lol…
It was turned into a way of trolling extremists on both sides of the political scale. But since the alt-right has sort of taken it in (because Hillary Clinton tried to say that pepe was a white nationalist thing), the left now sees it as a hate symbol, because anything they don’t like / understand is considered a hate symbol.
Horde say kek, Alliance say bur.
Wait, how is this edge lord kek shit a hate symbol? I am super confused.
Because everything the left doesn’t like / doesn’t understand is a hate symbol.
Okay this world is gone to hell, why not just ban all symbols and logo, chants because today everything some how seems to be offensive to everyone, people need to grow up and stop crying so much…. And the far right a rasist and all that jazz, kinda makes u think what all these lefists are doing u cant say or do anything without offending someone
2017 is a fucking weird year.
How dare you talk down the year 2017!
Pistols at dawn, sir!
Perhaps sooner… Before they ban the pistols. Hell, before they ban dawn itself for not adhering to diversity and showing too much white in the sunlight it brings with it.
You laugh, but if milk can be considered white supremacy by some, I could imagine a situation where reflected light over a bunch of separate images could be thought to be some malicious secret code.
Also Blakeavon downvoted me for saying 2017 is weird, which is just precious.
I wish they would stop calling them the alt right as they are not an alternative anything they were known as the extreme right for decades