The cowardice of an ‘anti-fascist’ video game company

Anti-fascism isn’t a game. You can’t preen yourself and say you oppose dictatorship and the power of the mob, then give into mobs and arbitrarily slander innocent people. You can’t say you believe in justice, and then condone injustice. And, this should be basic, you can’t say you support freedom of speech and the right to dissent, and then censor for that most mulish and cowardly of reasons that free speech allows controversy. It’s meant to be controversial. There’s no point in having it if it isn’t.

To Ubisoft, anti-fascism is a game: a computer game to be precise. The latest plaything from the gaming corporation is Watch Dogs: Legion. In a ‘near-future London,’ a private security company called Albion has used the fallout from terrorist attacks to establish a dictatorship. The players must recruit resistance fighters and strike back. ‘Everyone you see has a unique backstory, personality, and skill set,’ the makers explain.