The History of the ASSASSIN’S CREED: SHADOWS Controversy

2025 is looking to be a standout year for video game releases. There have been many releases in the last few months with the latest being the latest entry in the Assassin’s Creed series: Assassin’s Creed Shadows.

Assassin’s Creed is one of those series that even people who do not know video games would know and Shadows is looking to be no exception. However people may know this game for less then positive reasons. The game has faced a lot of controversy in the months leading up to its release. While some of the controversy is just stereotypical gamergate nonsense, the game has faced some genuine criticism for certain things that could actually be seen in bad taste.

Leading up to the release of the game, there has been many different cases of controversy surrounding it. Controversy started as soon as the game got announced, with the character of Yasuke being a central character in the plot. Yasuke is a foreign samurai who is African. Of course this caused issues with conservative critics and fans on social media reacted negatively on social media and it even led to some accusing Ubisoft of “going woke”. While I think the “going woke” argument does not hold ground, an interesting point that people have made about the game is that Ubisoft has never had a protagonist in Assassin’s Creed be of East Asian descent and they argue that this would have been the perfect time to do so. This harassment got so bad that it led to threats against the developers and it even got compared to Gamergate. It even led to some people messing with Yasuke’s Wikipedia page (which is really dumb.)

Ubisoft game director Charles Benoit defended the decision, saying that Yasuke is supposed to be the surrogate character for the player. He says that Yasuke was chosen because it allows the players to discover Japan as he does. It allows the player to see Japan “through the eyes of a foreigner”. Overall, I understand why Ubisoft made the decision to use Yasuke as a main character. Scholar Thomas Lockley defended Yasuke’s portrayal as a samurai, and stated that no reputable Japanese historian had questioned Yasuke’s samurai status. This in turn, incited even more controversy in Japan. Lockley has been sharing different information about Yasuke in different parts of the world. Lockley recently came under fire for sharing different info in both English and Japanese. Lockley came under fire in Japan for using Japanese and English for having “two tongues”. This even led to the Japanese government getting involved as well. This even led to Lockley denying that he had anything to do with the game as a result and he even had to freeze his social media accounts due to death threats he received.

Overall, I find this whole situation is much more then “oh no Ubisoft is going woke for no particular reason.” I also understand both sides of the argument have their merits. On the one hand Assassin’s Creed as a series has never really dabbled in Asian culture all that much and the characters are almost always Caucasian so the complaints of no Asian representation are warranted. On the other hand, I can appreciate what Ubisoft is trying to do with Yasuke as a character. Overall, I’ve noticed that the main complaint about Yasuke now is that the game does split up playtime between him and Naoe the other main character evenly. Honestly, this feels like more of a story issue then a character issue. Assassin’s Creed is way more popular in the West then it is in Japan. There will be a lot more players from other parts of the world and a lot of them may have never been to Japan before. Knowing this, Ubisoft made the decision to make Yasuke a foreigner that is experiencing Japan for the very first time. Personally, while I appreciate the attempt at making a relatable character, I am starting to get sick and tired of it because it feels that being relatable is always a pre-requisite to being a cool character and I find that being relatable is not necessary to be a cool character. It’s especially apparent in video games and sometimes I just want to be very powerful in the video games I play.

While Yasuke is probably the biggest source of controversy for Shadows, he is far from the only one. The game was originally set to release on November 15, 2024 but it got delayed to Valentine’s Day 2025. Then in January the game got delayed even further to March 20, 2025. Now at first glance March 20th might not seem to be an important date, but it is in Japan. March 20, 2025 is the 30th anniversary of the Tokyo subway sarin attack. For those that might may not know, the Tokyo subway sarin attack was a terrorist attack in Japan where members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult entered the Tokyo metro subway with sarin poison, causing the deaths of thirteen people. The game release on this anniversary can be seen in bad taste to the Japanese consumer. This is another situation where it’s not as morally black and white as it may seem. On the one hand, the game was delayed multiple times, so Ubisoft probably just picked a release date without really thinking about it. On the other hand, I feel as though the international corporation probably should have known about this anniversary especially since the game takes place in Japan so they probably did a whole lot of research into the country’s history. Honestly in my opinion, I think this is a huge screw up on Ubisoft’s part. This feels like the parallel of releasing a game in America on 9/11, which is something I have never seen happen. Now the argument could be made that Ubisoft is a company in France so you could give them the benefit of the doubt, but to that I say while that may be true, Japan is the subject of their game, so they could stand to know more about the history of the country. Overall, I think this was just a silly mistake on Ubisoft’s part and it is far from the worst controversy that Shadows received from Japan.

Also this is not the only controversy that the game has received from Japan. (Be prepared to hear that a lot) Shadows was rated “CERO Z” by Japan’s Computer Entertainment Rating Organization, which would limit the sale of the game to adults. This was due to the level of gore within the game. This led to Ubisoft making a Japan-specific version of the game where the gore is removed to achieve a less strict CERO rating. This news honestly surprised me at first. I never really imagined Assassin’s Creed to be all that bloody and violent. It honestly feels like child’s play compared to games like Gears of War and DOOM 2016. But then I remembered that the game is going for a more realistic approach to its combat. There’s also the fact that the game puts more focus on head to head combat with Yasuke. While you still have the stealth assassin’s gameplay that the Assassin’s Creed series is known for, there is more dueling gameplay against enemies as well. That, coupled with the more realistic gameplay, is what added more gore to the game. Now ratings boards giving violent video games scrutiny is nothing new. Heck, Shadows is not even the first game release this year that is going through this sort of thing, as the Silent Hill 2 remake is going through the exact same thing in Australia. However, it’s the fact that once again, this is happening in Japan that I find interesting. I cannot help but feel that is more to the story then just gore.

The address of Assassin’s Creed Shadows issue at the National Diet of Japan, with English subtitles by @KM1514Brookpic.twitter.com/RiawycymPL

— Grummz (@Grummz) March 19, 2025

The game also received controversy in Japan due to its promotion. A collectible figure was scheduled to be released in promotion for the game. The figure used a design similar to the damaged one-legged Torii gate Sannō Shrine in Nagasaki, located less than a mile from the epicenter of the nuclear bombing of Nagasaki. It was removed from sale following claims of cultural insensitivity. In February 2025, leaked gameplay footage showed Yasuke being able to enter the Itatehyōzu Shrine and destroy the altar, causing controversy. Shrine officials said they were not consulted about the shrine’s usage in the game and that they would take “appropriate action” against the game. Following complaints from Hiroyuki Kada of the Japanese House of Councillors and Shigeru Ishiba, the Prime Minister of Japan, Ubisoft removed the ability to destroy certain objects within temples, as well as reducing the “amount of blood shed by NPCs in the various shrines and temples across Assassin’s Creed Shadows.  

This is the biggest controversy that the game has faced in Japan. This is also the one controversy that is not as morally grey as the others. While I can see the arguments for Yasuke being included in the game or the fact that the game releasing on March 20th, this is the one controversy that I can not really defend Ubisoft on. This would be on the same level as a game allowing you to destroy the Vatican. You know that if a game were to come out with something like that, the Western world would be outraged. This got so bad that even the Prime Minister of Japan himself was upset at the game as well. I feel that the anger was justified to an extent. This is why I think that games should adopt the Yakuza/Like a Dragon approach to showing things that are actually real. In those games, there are both fictional and real brands and only fictional brands are destructible, so you can still destroy things and the other real brands are absolutely fine. Ultimately, this is another issue that stems from Ubisoft’s need to make things realistic. It is also interesting that while reading about this issue, I have seen articles that are defending the shrine destruction and I honestly think that these articles are written by people who just want the clicks by having a different opinion the the majority.

Now where does this leave the game? Surprisingly, the controversy has not really affected the sales of the game. Devil May Cry creator Hideki Kamiya has chimed in on all the controversy, saying that most people do not actually care about the social issues that the game is facing. He says that people should just play the game. According to Kamiya, it is only a vocal minority that feel this way about the game. This take is probably the one that I agree with the most. It is probably the closest to being correct in this situation and this is shown through the sales of the game which have been very good. Shadows has surpassed both Origins and Odyssey sales and have already sold 2 million copies in about five days. Shadows has also sold more copies in one week then Star Wars Outlaws (Ubisoft’s previous game) did in 3 months. The game has over 3 million players and the second highest Day One sales in franchise history, the biggest Ubisoft launch on the PlayStation digital store and over 40 million hours already played.

The game also has the highest concurrent player count for the series on Steam as well. On the one hand, this seems like really good news but of course Shadows is meant to be a AAA title and Ubisoft expects astronomical numbers in sales. Who knows, maybe the controversy prevented the game from selling even more. Granted these numbers come from Ubisoft’s social media accounts. I feel as though this is Ubisoft trying to cool the fire. This is because there has been talks of Chinese company Tencent purchasing Ubisoft, if things continue to fall apart for the company.

This is Ubisoft with Tencent breathing down their necks.

One thing that people seem to forget about Shadows is that it isn’t only one of Ubisoft’s most controversial games but it is also one of the most expensive costing almost 300 million dollars to make and the game has been in development since 2018. That was also before the game got delayed twice which added another 20 million dollars to the budget. This ballooning budget makes it so that no matter how much money the game makes it would still be a net loss for Ubisoft. This wouldn’t even be the first Ubisoft game in recent memory that would be considered a flop since Skull and Bones was also considered a huge flop due to that game also having a huge budget and it being almost impossible for Ubisoft to make their money back. This has even led to some people thinking that this might be the end of Ubisoft as a company.

However, looking at all the stats, I think that Kamiya-san is correct with his assessment of Shadows. There is always a vocal minority that finds the controversy in anything. The only issue I find with this is that social media makes it much easier for these sorts of things to take root. I find it interesting that at the end of the day, the consensus around Shadows is that it is just ok. While it reviewed really well, most players are saying that its another 7/10 from one of gaming’s biggest franchises. Since the game’s budget was huge Ubisoft could not afford to have a 7/10 game and unfortunately that seems to be the case. This combined with all the controversy combined to make something that could be seen as a flop. These situations on their own may not have sunk the ship, but it feels like its a perfect storm of events that may potentially lead to the end of Ubisoft as we know it.

The question is where does this leave Ubisoft now. They have had many flops recently, but its not looking to be the end of the company like we initially thought. That’s because it was recently announced that Ubisoft has formed a new subsidiary with Chinese tech company Tencent. Tencent is famous in the video game world as they are the owners of companies like Epic Games and Riot Games and a lot of the big video game companies. Tencent invested $1.25 billion dollars for a 25% stake in the new subsidiary and the subsidiary is looking to improve Ubisoft’s flagship franchises. Ubisoft released a statement saying that the aim of this subsidiary is to improve both their narrative experiences and multiplayer offerings. It will also focus on the development of Far Cry, Assassin’s Creed, and Rainbow Six. They also stated that Ubisoft is bringing back Ghost Recon and The Division as well. While an acquisition of this scale was probably in the works for a really long time, I think that Shadows lukewarm reception definitely played a factor in accelerating this process. Overall, while I am not the biggest Ubisoft fan in the world, I will be interested in seeing how this subsidiary will affect the company and its future. I do not think that Ubisoft is going anywhere anytime soon for better or worse.

Honestly at the end of the day, if you want to play a really good samurai game play Ghost of Tsushima; it is way better and it’s on PC now.