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The leadup to the release of Assassin’s Creed Shadows was dogged by a relentless campaign of outrage driven by aggrieved gamers angered over the presence of a Black samurai in Japan. The potential impact of that campaign ahead of the game’s launch was a big question—but then the launch actually happened and by all indications, it’s been a big success for Ubisoft: Reviews, player numbers, and the overall response from gamers has been very positive.
There’s also been signs of growing pushback against that pre-release toxicity, maybe best encapsulated by YouTuber FightinCowboy, who paused an Assassin’s Creed Shadows stream last week to rebuke viewers who were making noise about it.
This is a real gamer. Well fucking said @Fightincowboy Absolute facts pic.twitter.com/fh8W1JsvoNMarch 20, 2025
“Listen, I can already tell people in chat are getting a little feisty,” FightinCowboy said not long after the stream began. “Bro, stop. We’re gonna have to put you in timeout. There’s no reason to be making comments like that. I’m gonna make this clear, if you’re just coming here to get into this weird fucking race shit about a historical figure that existed in Japanese history, I’m just gonna remove you.
“I don’t give a fuck what your opinion is of this game. I don’t care. Your opinion is worthless to me … We’re not doing this shit. If you are upset that there’s a Black guy in a videogame, fuck off. I don’t want you here.”
It accelerates from there into a fairly brief but extremely enviable rant and very plain warning that those who violate the one simple rule will be banned immediately—a flash of truly righteous anger that leaves no room for misunderstanding.
But it’s not just an outburst of rage: In a subsequent video, FightinCowboy dove deeper into what happened during the stream, and the greater toxic malaise that’s gripped gaming in recent years, noting the comparable outrage that’s surrounded recent games including Stellar Blade, Stalker 2, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, Avowed, and others, largely because of the presence of gay, trans, or minority characters.
More than once during that stream, FightinCowboy expresses astonishment that people who don’t like Assassin’s Creed Shadows are putting so much energy into Assassin’s Creed Shadows.
“Imagine that you were like, ‘Hey, we’re having fucking tabletop [Warhammer] tonight, I got my new army set up, we’re going to play,’ and I’m like, ‘Yeah, I’ll come’,” he says. “And then I show up and the whole time I’m there I’m just shitting on your models, I’m being like, yeah, your paint job looks fucking garbage. Necrons again, yeah, fucking big surprise, fucking dickhead.
“And the whole time you’re like, “What the fuck is this dude? Like I said we were playing Warhammer, why are you coming over and being a dickhead? Do you not like Warhammer? Why would you come to Warhammer night if you have a problem with Warhammer?'”
Since my socials are getting flooded let’s discuss the infamous “crash-out”https://t.co/IMl3FJXo3iMarch 21, 2025
It’s a fair question, and a good chunk of the stream is spent encouraging people to find better ways to spend their time—and, maybe more pointedly, to be aware of the fact that much of the outrage seen online (not just about Shadows, but everything) is purposefully stoked by “grifters” who turn ragebait into revenues via their streaming and social media channels: “I think a lot of people that are getting riled up by these grifters, I think you’re just looking for someone to reach out to and you don’t know that you’re having smoke blown up your ass by people that profit off your outrage, and so I’m doing this video to try try and give y’all a hand.”
Another very salient point he makes is that despite appearances, the seemingly all-encompassing fury directed at Assassin’s Creed Shadows added up to essentially nothing: A miserable experience for developers, no doubt, but a complete non-event outside the very constricted corridors of social media.
“This is the fun thing, right, if y’all have friends that don’t watch streams, if y’all have friends that just play videogames, they don’t fuck with social media, ask them about this shit. Be like, ‘Yo did you hear about the Stellar Blade drama, did you hear about the Assassin’s Creed drama,’ and most of them are going to be like, ‘What are you talking about? Is the game, is it bad?’
“And you’re like, ‘No there’s a Black samurai and you can bang Nobunaga’s sister.’ They’re they’re going to look like Walter White and that Breaking Bad meme where they’re like, ‘Jesse what the fuck are you talking about?’ Normal people don’t get upset about this shit. This is a manufactured issue in the online space.”
It’s true, and it’s an important point to remember: Being very online can skew your perspective, and while campaigns of anger like the one directed at Assassin’s Creed Shadows aren’t entirely without impact, their actual relevance can easily be overestimated, as seen for instance in Ubisoft’s sad pre-launch hand-wringing about not pushing agendas.
That undoubtedly comes as cold comfort to developers on the wrong end of harassment and abuse, which is very real and ugly as hell, and none of this is going to separate the perpetually aggrieved from their imagined grievances: There is, as FightinCowboy said, money to be made in that game, not to mention a certain sensation of status that’s likely unachievable in the wider world. The persistence of that willfully embrace rage is easily seen in some of the low-grade, occasionally slur-filled reactions to his videos.
But it’s about time we started coming around to the idea that game developers and media don’t have to give performatively angry gamers the time of day, much less worry about addressing their shifting concerns in whatever way they demand at any given moment. It’s a simple and long overdue idea, but watching FightinCowboy’s videos, and the very positive responses to them (which grossly outweigh the negative), it gives me hope that maybe it’s also an idea whose time is finally starting to come.
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Kurt Indovina
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