Next month’s Madden NFL 21 is being altered at the last minute to remove mentions of the Washington Redskins team name and logo imagery, a rep for publisher Electronic Arts has told Kotaku.
This comes at the end of a week that began with the NFL team’s management finally listening to calls for the Redskins’ racist name to be changed.
“We are pleased to see Washington’s decision to change their team name and visual identity,” the rep said. “We are quickly working to update Madden NFL 21 to feature a generic Washington team, while we await final word on the updated team name and logo design.”
Because the game is nearly ready to ship for its August 25 release, the version that comes out on disc will still include the Redskins name and logo, but EA said that connecting to the internet will trigger an update that will remove those.
The Washington team hasn’t announced a new name yet, so EA will initially replace the Redskins with a generically-named Washington team.
“Changes to the name and logo will come via title updates that will download automatically,” the EA rep explained. “The first changes will be available to our EA Access players and will include audio/commentary updates; motion graphics and presentation updates; stadium art, environments, crowd gear and signage updates; and uniform updates. Players may continue to see some outdated Washington references in other areas of the game at launch, but we are committed to removing all of those from the game in additional title updates coming shortly after launch.”
“Players who purchase a physical disc will need to connect online to receive the Washington team changes, as the game is now in the final stages of preparation before shipping,” they said.
I still don’t know why the name stayed for so long. I think the southpark episode mocking them team was pretty succinct.
It would be like keeping a team named “N*****”
Short answer: the power of “legacy”, a more armchair psychology based answer: admitting things like this are wrong now means acknowledging that they were always wrong, and that’s the hardest thing for a lot of people to do.
I’m pretty sure we still have those lollies called red skins. Does having a space in the name make them OK? Interesting that they got rid of the imagery years ago.
Those are also being renamed for the same reason, as are the jelly babies called Chicos.
Nestle announced last month that they’re changing that name too:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-23/nestle-red-skins-chicos-allens-lollies-rebrand-overtones/12384986
Our Redskins aren’t directly referencing American Indians though. It’s describing what the product is
Washington Redskins is directly referencing American Indians.
Same with coon cheese, it’s not the slur, it’s the actual last name of the original owner of the company.
I recall the original Red Skin lollies having a Native American’s profile on the wrapper…