Sony has confirmed that the Stellar Blade in-game art alluding to a racial slur will be patched out with a day one update, saying it was “unintentional.”
As first reported by IGN, it was discovered that in the forthcoming action role-playing game from Shift Up Corporation, there features a coincidental reference to a racial slur that appears as graffiti.
As the screenshot below shows, the word “Hard” can be seen painted onto a wall next to the “R Shop” – which indicates the location of an NPC called Roxanne and her store – resulting in the unfortunate reference to the racial slur when combined.
This “Hard” graffiti can be found throughout the game in numerous places, however, and is used as generic scenery dressing. Sony claims that this one instance wasn’t intentional on Shift Up Corporation’s part.
Sony says the ‘Hard R Shop’ graffiti in #StellarBlade was ‘unintentional’ It’s since been removed pic.twitter.com/DbrCvlZm0FApril 24, 2024
“The placement of two graphics near each other in Stellar Blade resulted in an unintentional objectionable phrase,” said PlayStation in a statement to IGN. “Shift Up had no intention of creating offensive artwork and will be replacing the graffiti for the Day 1 patch.”
When asked if there were plans to remove the art from the physical version of Stellar Blade as well, PlayStation’s reiterated that it “should be removed for all users in the Day 1 update.”
Although Sony said that the graffiti would be removed in the Day one patch, it looks like it’s already done so. According to a report from Kotaku, when visiting the same location with an early review copy of the game, it was discovered the “Hard” graffiti has now been replaced with blue graffiti reading “Crime.”
Stellar Blade is set to launch on April 26 exclusively for PlayStation 5.
In TechRadar Gaming’s full review, hardware editor Rhys Wood called the game “an incredibly fun and stylish action game” packed with “engaging combat” and “huge enemy variety”.