Injustice 2 Rewards Players For Beating Up LGBTQ Character In Pride Event

Happy pride month! We now have the chance to celebrate love and inclusion across the world, and gaming companies are getting involved to share the love. Some companies like Respawn are offering little mementoes with their Pride badge in Apex Legends, and others are going all-out like Xbox, donating $150,000 to LGBTQ nonprofits and giving out free games to celebrate. However, companies choose to celebrate, at least they’re putting some effort into putting members of the LGBTQ community in the spotlight. Some, though, are missing entirely.

INJUSTICE 2’S ACCIDENTALLY HOMOPHOBIC PRIDE CELEBRATION

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As a part of Injustice 2’s Pride celebration on mobile, a new event has started that was meant to highlight the LGBTQ characters of the game, but it’s seemed to have the opposite effect. Injustice’s Twitter account has been keeping players posted with their progress during the pride event, with the last update indicating that after the game’s pressure, fans have defeated Poison Ivy 175,000 times, and need to do so another 225,000 times to complete the challenge. The problem is, Poison Ivy is canonically gay, in a relationship with Harley Quinn. To celebrate the LGBTQ community, players have been asked to beat a member to near-death 400,000 times. Whoops.

INJUSTICE 2 RESPONDS TO EVENT BACKLASH

The team at Injustice 2 Mobile have responded to the incredible backlash to their pride event by deleting the original tweet pushing players to defeat Poison Ivy, and have posted a statement of apology.

“We recognize associating our latest Global Challenge with Pride was insensitive and inappropriate”, the statement begins. “Real life violence against the LGBTQIA+ community and women within that community in particular is all too common and we should actively engage in efforts to end LGBTQIA+ violence, not normalise it. We apologize to the greater community, but especially LGBTQIA+ members. We are committed to listening and doing better.”

This Pride event is a clear and bold misstep and one that the Injustice team would be lucky to recover from. Fingers crossed they’ll think more carefully about their upcoming events, lest they cause any more offence.

Images via Warner Bros Games