Social backlash has forced Danish studio Serious Games Interactive remove a slave Tetris minigame from its game, Playing History 2 - Slave Trade.
Playing History 2 - Slave Trade is marketed as an educational game where players get to "travel back in time and witness the horrors of slave trade firsthand." However, in one of the mini-games, the player is tasked with fitting as many slaves as possible into a ship's hold, Tetris style.
Interestingly, the game was released nearly two years ago but the offensive mini-game was removed this week, only after screenshots spread across social media and mainstream news outlets began to report on the story.
The game and trailer was updated Monday. Slave Tetris has been removed as it was perceived to be extremely insensitive by some people.
— Serious Games (@SeriousGamesInt) September 1, 2015
Although they have removed the mini-game, Serious Games still doesn't understand why slave-Tetris angered so many people.
"Basicially, we removed the Tetris part because it distracted the discussion from what was important and was literally 15 secs out of two hour game," said Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen, Serious Games CEO in a Steam discussion.
"In other words it wasn't as important for us as for a lot of people, so why not just remove it.. I know I have the freedom of speech but if yelling banana mean [sic] we cannot talk about the rest of fruits - well maybe we should hide the banana for a while."
