Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ Japanese Steam page drops term “samurai” from Yasuke’s description

Following last week’s postponement of Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ release from February 14 to March 20, Ubisoft updated the game’s Steam page accordingly. However, for the Japanese page alone, it seems they also quietly adjusted the text to remove the word “samurai” from the description of Yasuke.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows is the first title in Ubisoft’s long running series to be set in Japan, featuring dual protagonists Naoe and Yasuke. However, since the game’s announcement, it has received backlash both in Japan and overseas for controversies related to historical accuracy and unauthorized use of imagery. Yasuke has been the subject of wide-ranging opinions- ranging from those who dislike Ubisoft’s decision to include a non-Japanese protagonist character in a game set in Japan, to others who are looking forward to the fresh perspective.
Although Yasuke was a real person associated with Japanese warlord Oda Nobunaga, it has been a topic of debate as to whether he was a samurai or rather a bodyguard who worked for the warlord. In Ubisoft’s official description of the game on their website in both English and Japanese, Yasuke is described as “the powerful African samurai of historical legend.”
On the English language Steam page too, he is a “legendary samurai.” However, after Ubisoft updated the Steam page last week, the word “samurai” vanished from Yasuke’s description, but only on the Japanese version of the page. He is now a “great warrior” (literally, a warrior capable of besting a thousand). This rewording decision might have been made in light of the backlash against the game. However, at the time of writing, the official Japanese website, Epic Games Store, PlayStation Store, and Microsoft Store all still describe him as a samurai.


Strangely, information about the pre-order bonus quest called Thrown to the Dogs and the DLC Claws of Awaji (the latter was added briefly on January 9) have also since been removed from the Steam page description- although that doesn’t mean they have been cancelled.
Incidentally, the main reason given for Assassins Creed Shadows’ postponement to March was to implement customer feedback. It will be interesting to see how this impacts the final release.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows is scheduled to be released on March 20 for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC and Mac.
Written by Verity Townsend based on the original Japanese article (original article’s publication date: 2025-01-15 14:13 JST)
This is incredibly pathetic.
Nioh’s Williams is also based on a real character, and I don’t see ANYONE complaining about how he was portrayed. (It differed greatly from the real stories.)
It’s a freaking video game, not a history book, and we all know none of this ‘controversies’ would have happened if the guy wasn’t black.
@Amir the difference is that Ieyasu Tokugawa due to the services provided gave the tittle of Samurai to William Adams. As far as I know, that is a real historical event. Yasuke, on another hand never had such tittle, and the Japanese take seriously those records on a cultural level.
The thing here is that they did bad research, decided to take the word of a con-artist, Thomas Lockey, that attempted to adapt his romance into something factual (Yasuke being a Samurai), when he was a retainer at best, and a slave/oddity to the Japanese at worst, and pass the “Yasuke, the Samurai” as a samurai, and signal virtue anyone that would bring up the facts, even to the point that they would say westerners were faking comments in Japanese to complain about the game, when the Japanese were voicing their concerns to the fact that if they want to make a game with historically accurate depictions, then they should learn more about their culture, and Ubisoft dismissed that. It came into a point where wiki articles were being edited and Japanese history being compromised online to fit such agenda. The Japanese government eventually looked up the issue, accused the western people of whitewashing their culture, and cultural appropriation, and the guy who wrote the Yasuke novel, Thomas Lockey, is being investigating for deliberately attempting to push his writings as historical academic papers, and incentivising third parties to do so as well, when they are in fact, fiction.
If the game was in a fictional setting, and they would be clear about it, the Japanese wouldn’t mind. Pretty much like Nioh, that is a fantasy game based on Japanese lore, Team Ninja never stated that Nioh was based on historical events, unlike Ubisoft been pushing with Assassin’s Creed’s Yasuke portrayal to appeal to a very specific demographic.