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For Honor Groping Execution Accidentally Added To Game Has Been Replaced
Last month, Ubisoft added a new execution for the Valkyrie hero and has had a headache and a half removing and replacing it.
The execution, which you can see in the video below, involved the female Valkyrie plunging her spear into the enemy's gut, who then falls forward. The enemy's hands land on the Valkyrie's breasts, who, despite having just had a spear run through them, begins pantomiming apology motions. The Valkyrie then kicks them in the crotch and backhands them with the shield.
The execution was pulled immediately, which Ubisoft called a bug fix. Yesterday, the execution was finally replaced, with a similar animation that has the enemy's hands land on the Valkyrie's shield before she kicks them in the crotch. You can see the new animation below.
On the For Honor subreddit, fans of the game have been dragging on the new version and decrying the removal as censorship. The most vocal opponents of the change are accusing Ubisoft of cowing to pressure from complaints. Independent verification could not find any complaints during the time the execution was available.
When reached for comment, Ubisoft told us "On November 9, an unapproved For Honor Execution for the Valkyrie was incorrectly made available in-game and removed within an hour of release. Any players who purchased the unapproved execution had their Steel refunded. Our team has implemented additional stop gaps to the development process to ensure insensitive content is not incorporated into For Honor. The proper version of the execution was released on December 18."
Ubisoft mentioned that feedback or complaints were not seen or taken into account before the mistaken execution was removed.
For Honor is available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. Ubisoft recently announced that dedicated server tests would be occurring soon.
Our Take
It is unclear how the execution mistakenly got into the game in the first place, but it was removed quite quickly. I don't think it necessarily added anything to the Valkyrie to get accidentally groped and removing it certainly doesn't qualify as censorship.
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