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South Korea-based Bluehole Studio removed new virtual gear from its popular mobile game PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, or PUBG, and apologized on July 15 due to "improper content" that angered netizens, Xinhua News Agency reported.
PUBG is an online multiplayer battle royale game developed and published by PUBG Corporation, a subsidiary of South Korean video game company Bluehole.
The game developer introduced the new gear on July 14. A fighter pilot helmet featured an image of the Rising Sun, a war flag of the Imperial Japanese Army, viewed as a symbol associated with Japanese imperialism in the early 20th century.
The developer also named the AI characters in the game “Unit 731," which was a notorious biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that undertook lethal human experimentation during World War II.
Netizens from both China and South Korea were angered by the new additions. Some said on the game’s official forum that they were so disappointed they would delete the game.
PUBG said the gear and character name were meant to have been deleted but appeared in the new update. They said they would delete them at once and apologized for the incident.
