Bungie spotted the connection to a meme, but not the meme's connection to white supremacy.
Earlier this week, we were made aware that a graphical element on one of Destiny 2âs armor pieces bore close resemblance to an internet meme that has been subsequently repurposed to represent hate and intolerance.
Repeating myself from the older thread (where I was probably too harsh - Bungie deserve credit for the removal and transparency), but I do object to the wording here. It bore a close resemblance specifically to the repurposed meme, not merely the 3 characters âkekâ.
I also donât find the insistence that itâs all coincidence remotely credible, but as others have said thatâs not something that can be proved either way.
Hmm. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
The only reason I sort of buy this is that they took it down so quickly and were quick to explain why they couldnât take the thing out completely. I also suspect this is the harshest thing their lawyers (And really activisionâs to be honest) would let them get away with. The real question now is is that the only thing in there and if not what do they do about it?
This apology and explanation actually seems surprisingly genuine and transparent for a developer under the wing of a huge company like Activision. Expected nothing more than the usual âweâve taken it down, we apologize for it, we listen to our community, blah blahâ. Good on them, hope theyâre more careful in the future.
Iâm having some trouble with that too, but if their version really has existed since 2015 as they claim then Iâm pretty sure it predates the Kekistan Flag design (though obviously not the original âkekâ concept) by a fair margin.
To be fair, I hadnât even heard of the Kekistan flag until these articles dropped, so I think itâs very possible that it got missed on an internal review. Iâm glad they reacted quickly, Iâm sad that silly internet jokes keep getting swiped and corrupted.
Considering the âkekistanâ flagâs design roots, and how this particular gear piece used the same KKK imagery that it did(the square of Ks is an older KKK emblem, and the âkekistanâ flag just put the E lines inside it), I absolutely 100% will not believe that no one at Bungie was aware of this at all. The person responsible for the design itself at least knew exactly what they were doing.
Theyâre not taking responsibility for this, theyâre just removing it and going âwhoops, what a weird accidentâ. I hope that, internally, theyâre looking into this more deeply and taking the appropriate action.
But I bet they arenât.