Ubisoft has apologised for a recent promotional email for The Division 2‘s beta which some people felt was overly political. The email in question was sent with a subject line that read: “Come see what a real government shutdown looks like in the Private Beta.”
As many of you probably know, that line references the recent U.S. government shutdown that resulted in the loss of some government services and many federal employees not receiving paychecks. The shutdown has temporarily been halted, but already stands as the longest shutdown in U.S. history.
Ubisoft’s “witty” approach to the shutdown didn’t last as long. Not long after the initial email was sent out, Ubisoft followed up with an apology message:
“A marketing email promoting Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 was sent in error today. This was a grave breakdown in process and we apologize for this error and the offensive subject line of the email. We recognize the very real impact of the United States government shutdown on thousands of people and did not intend to make light of the situation.”
There are a couple things to consider here when breaking down this situation. First, the U.S. government shutdown is most certainly a controversial topic that has resulted in numerous consequences. Second, Ubisoft has previously stated that it doesn’t consider The Division 2 to be an overtly political game and indicated that it is not interested in using titles like The Division 2 and Far Cry 5 to make political references (despite their obvious parallels to real-world situations). This email fiasco doesn’t exactly mesh with those previously stated intentions. We can only assume that the promotion was the result of a substantial miscommunication.
In any case, The Division 2‘s private beta is still set to run from February 7th to 10th 2019. The game’s properly launch will follow on March 15th, with the PC version of the game launching exclusively on the Epic Store.