Blaze Media Reports: Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed Shadows has caused significant uproar in Japan due to creative licenses and historical inaccuracies.

The game focuses on the greatly exaggerated depiction of Yasuke, an alleged black samurai from the mid-1500s. Ubisoft turned the vague story of the "black slave" in Japan into a fierce and heroic samurai.

As expected, Japanese gamers did not take kindly to the setting of feudal Japan being used for a game inspired by diversity, equity, and inclusion.

The game has caused such great offense that Japanese political aides have made comments, and letters have been sent to Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology as well as to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, among others.

A petition regarding the "lack of historical accuracy and cultural respect" in the game is nearing 100,000 signatures.

"This game is based on the samurai of Japan, ignoring the fact that the samurai is the upper class," the petition continued. "Ubisoft continues to misunderstand the essence and role of samurai. This is a serious insult to Japanese culture and history and can lead to racism in Asia. We call on Ubisoft to immediately discontinue the launch."

Ubisoft initially decreed complaints to be hateful and essentially racist, with CEO Yves Guillemot making remarks in June 2024.

"I want to make it clear that we, at Ubisoft, condemn these hateful acts in the strongest possible terms," Guillemot said, according to Game Developer. "I encourage the rest of the industry and players to denounce them, too."

As YouTuber Shohei Kondo stated, the game's creative director, Jonathan Dumont, originally said the idea behind the black samurai character came from "looking for a character who could be seen by us as a samurai, someone who is not Japanese."