PUBG Mobile recently released a weapon and mask set that had seemingly included Rising Sun imagery. The item pack was removed on the same day by PUBG‘s developers and an apology was issued, and refunds followed. You can see the item set below, which included a pilot mask with the offending imagery along with a weapon.
For those not in the know, this imagery (courtesy of Korean site Donga) is highly offensive to many as it is associated heavily with war crimes the Japanese Imperial army committed in WWII, especially in Korea where the Japanese army committed many of their war crimes. This offensive imagery was further compounded by the fact that many bots have been found to have offensive names as well.
The same day this controversy occurred, a bot was seen with the ID of “Unit 731.” This ID references a notorious Japanese WWII era unit which conducted lethal human experimentation on Korean, Mongolian and Chinese peoples. So all in all, PUBG has not been having a particularly good time with their non-Japanese Asian players.
Although only some action has been made about the bots, PUBG Corp. has taken swift action on the item set. According to The Korea Times, the company apologized on an official fan site stating that they “apologize for causing concerns over a pilot mask item” and that they “will conduct an overall re-examination of [their] image production process to prevent such a recurrence.”Additionally, some players, such as Jpeyatt on Reddit, are receiving the message shown in the image below after purchasing the item set. They are getting a refund for the set, having the offending item removed from their inventory, but are able to keep the weapon from the purchase.
So what do you all think about this? Should PUBG Corp. not have included the item in the first place or were they just a bit foolish? Sound off in the comments below!
