'The more contemporary, vile derivation that has been repurposed by hate groups was not surfaced through this process, and therefore, the armor was approved for ship,' Bungie says.Īs for the preventative measures Bungie plans to implement, it says it'll figure out how to 'more deeply vet' game content. Now how did it manage to go under the radar of Bungie's watchful eye? Well, the team in charge of reviewing content for cultural, geographical, and other sensitive issues did flag the item, but it only did so in connection with the 'kek' meme and not with what it now apparently stands for. How did the whole thing come to be? According to Bungie, the design was made 'as part of gear foundry explorations in June 2015.' They were occasions where graphic artists 'routinely reference real world art, iconography, typeface, and other design elements to inform the choices they make.' Bungie: 'This Was Completely Unintentional' Sure, it seems harmless enough at first glance, but the thing is, members of the alt-right recently started using it as a symbol to portray their values, as the Southern Poverty Law Center spotted in several instances. As a result, whenever a Horde player says 'LOL,' for instance, an Alliance member will see it as 'KEK' instead. In the game, the Alliance and the Horde, which are two factions at each other's throats, don't speak the same language. To start things off, the piece of armor in question is the Road Complex AA1 gauntlets, while the offending artwork on it is believed to be the Nazi-inspired Kekistan flag, a made-up banner of a fictional country 4chan users created.īasically, it's a meme that originates from World of Warcraft. Now as a follow-up to the kerfuffle, Bungie has provided an explanation on how the offensive emblem made it into Destiny 2 in a blog post, as well as the measures it intends to take to prevent anything like it from happening again. 'Renounce' doesn't mean the same thing as 'denounce,' but hey, the company's sentiment is pretty clear.

Destiny 2 road complex armor