Infinity Ward has made some changes to a controversial operator skin in Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare and Call Of Duty: Warzone. A patch released last night quietly changed of D-Day's "Border War" skin to "Home on the Range", after accusations that it was glorifying the police.
"Show them the error of their ways and make them pay with D-Day's Border War operator skin," the original description for the skin read.
The revised description to go along with the new name is far more innocuous. It now reads: "Play along with the deer and the antelope with the Home on the Range D-Day operator skin."
The controversial skin has changed in name only, and looks exactly the same as it ever did. D-Day's chest is still emblazoned with the word "police", while the Texas state flag adorns his left shoulder. The Operator's biography reveals that he's a Texan-born ex-US Army Ranger who joined the Demon Dogs Unit of the in-game Coalition forces.
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The Border War skin has come under a lot of fire in recent weeks. Many have accused its tone deaf approach in the midst of a turbulent time in the United States in regards to immigration and the Black Lives Matter, which continues to fight against systematic racism and police brutality in America.
Earlier this month, Infinity Ward also pulled the "okay" hand gesture from Modern Warfare and Warzone in response to its supposed ties to the far-right. Many in the Call Of Duty community were slightly confused by this move, as they'd always considered the "okay" gesture to be a fairly innocent way of signalling to other players.
However, recent years seem to have seen the gesture adopted as a hate symbol - prompting Infinity Ward to remove it from the game altogether.
Infinity Ward announced that it would be implementing tougher anti-racism measures back in June. The developer issued a statement in response to the death of George Floyd at the hands of the police, and the BLM protests that rose in the wake of that tragic event.
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"There is no place for racist content in our game," the studio wrote. "This is an effort we began with launch and we need to do a better job. We're missing thousands of daily bans of racist and hate-oriented names."
These measures have included "adding additional resources to monitor and ID racist content" as well as "adding filters and greater restrictions on name changes." Obviously punishing players for toxic and racist behaviour is all well and good... but it means nothing if Infinity Ward doesn't also assess and amend its own content accordingly.
Topics: Modern Warfare, Infinity Ward, Warzone, Call of Duty, Battle Royale, Activision