Racist Stellar Blade Art Will Be Removed Before You Play It

PlayStation 5 exclusive Stellar Blade launches with some racist designs on the disc, but a Day One update plans to remove it all after criticism from critics and influencers.

Developed by South Korean studio Shift Up, Stellar Blade is a PS3 game on steroids with frenetic hack-and-slash gameplay and eyeball-stretching sex appeal. Unfortunately, it also houses some racist artwork that has been pointed out in a number of reviews.

In the launch version of Stellar Blade, an area in the game called the “R Shop” has graffiti to the side of it. The graffiti in question changes the name of the location to the “Hard R Shop”, obviously referencing a racist term.

Speaking to IGN, Sony claims the racist connotations of this piece of artwork are “unintentional”. However, the artwork is already set for removal.

In the IGN piece, it is stated that the “HARD” graffiti does appear in multiple places across Stellar Blade’s world. This means that it could actually be a particularly bad coincidence, especially if graffiti assets are procedurally placed in the game world.

“The placement of two graphics near each other in Stellar Blade resulted in an unintentional objectionable phrase," reads a PlayStation statement on the matter. "Shift Up had no intention of creating offensive artwork and will be replacing the graffiti for the Day 1 patch."

With the racist graffiti still currently in the game, only critics, influencers and those who refuse to update Stellar Blade will see the inflammatory artwork. While some particular brand of YouTuber and Twitter user will undoubtedly keep their games update-free to see the racist artwork, most people will sensibly keep their game updated.

Stellar Blade is one of the few PS5 exclusives announced for release this year. Following the not-great-but-still-good Rise of the Ronin, there isn’t anything with a concrete release date left for PS5. However, Wolverine, Death Stranding 2, Silent Hill Remake and more are still in the works for the system.