Politically Neutral Ubisoft Apologizes for Incredibly Political Email

Ubisoft – who I remind you is not political (or at least, is “politically neutral”) – certainly has a thing for putting out political games and making political statements. Specifically, we’ve got the Division 2, a Tom Clancy game (a man who was decisively political) about a secret police organization under the thumb of the president (again, a political statement these days) and their efforts to salvage and re-establish the good ol’ US government. It’s a game that bleeds politics – literally in the first game, when “hoodies” were usually your indicator of a bad guy – and whoever was in charge of writing emails must have realized that when they sent out an advertisement for the upcoming private beta, who’s subject line read:
 

Come see what a real government shutdown looks like in the Private Beta.

That’s not funny and in very bad taste, of course, because of the hundreds of thousands of people who suffer during government shutdowns, but I’ll grant them that it’s clever and topical. All the same… it’s also pretty political. So a few hours late, Ubisoft did the very normal thing and apologized for it.
 

A marketing email promoting Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 was sent in error today. This was a grave breakdown in process and we apologize for this error and the offensive subject line of the email. We recognize the very real impact of the United States government shut down on thousands of people and did not intend of make light of the situation.

Obviously apologizing for the email was the right thing to do, but man: why can’t they just recognize that there are politics involved in all this? It’s becoming a bad joke that one of the most political studios in gaming is too scared to make political statements.

I’m not saying owning up to it would make things better, Ubi, but it’d make things more straightforward.