Watermelons and Censorship: Assassin’s Creed Shadows at the Center of Scandal Again

Ubisoft continues to face a wave of criticism for its upcoming project. This time, the reason for the indignation of Japanese players was the historical inconsistencies in the latest demonstration of the game.

Attentive viewers noticed that one of the screenshots contains watermelons, which were brought to Japan only in the 17th century – a whole century after the events of the game. Additional confusion was caused by the combination of blooming sakura, symbolizing spring, with these fruits, which ripen exclusively in the summer. In addition, the character Yasuke is dressed in golden armor from the Kamakura period, which was used two hundred years before the supposed time of action of Shadows.

Although such inaccuracies are not uncommon in “historical” Ubisoft games, the company’s reaction to criticism caused an even greater resonance. At the request of the publisher, several videos of Japanese blogger Shuhei Kondo criticizing the game were removed from YouTube. He tried to re-upload one of the videos twelve times, but each time he was blocked. However, Ubisoft’s attempts to suppress the discussion brought even more attention to the situation, causing the story to spread across the web and attract millions of views.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows is set to release on March 20 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series. Amid the ongoing negativity, Ubisoft has already made attempts to adjust its marketing strategy: the character Yasuke is gradually disappearing from promotional materials, and his description on Steam has been changed.