PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds Removes Offensive In-Game Items

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds has become the target of scrutiny lately. The developers added two particularly offensive items to players on the eastern hemisphere.

First reported by Korean news site Bzit, PUBG had recently added in a cosmetic item, and an AI bot name, that referenced WWII in a somewhat distasteful way, particularly to those in Japan, China, and Korea.

The first item was a pilot mask cosmetic item. The mask (seen in the header image) donned the Rising Sun symbol often associated with the Imperial Japanese military. This touched a bit too close to the idea of Kamikazes, who were Japanese pilots that intentionally crashed their planes often full of explosives, into enemy ships, camps, and bases.

The other item was a bit of a more historical reference. Players have found that the list of AI bots randomly chosen names includes "Unit 731." This is the same designation given to a Japanese covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit that conducted human experiments on prisoners of war from China, Korea, and Russia. There was an estimated 3,000+ death from internal tests and tens of thousands from field experiments.

Publisher Bluehole has apologized for the offense, and have removed both items from the game. They also issued the following statement.

"We apologise for causing concerns over a pilot mask item. We will conduct an overall re-examination of our image production process to prevent such a recurrence. We will enhance procedures to scrutinise game items before their release and hold the person in charge responsible."

Given how closely they've been working with Chinese game company Tencent, I'm surprised this made it through in the first place.