Bungie fixing Destiny 2 armor resembling white nationalist symbol

Destiny 2 developer Bungie is updating the game to fix a piece of armor featuring a symbol associated with a hate group, the studio announced today.

“It’s come to our attention that a gauntlet in Destiny 2 shares elements with a hate symbol,” Bungie said on Twitter. “It is not intentional. We are removing it.” The studio also apologized for the error, saying that the armor “does NOT represent our values” and adding, “We renounce hate in all forms.”

Bungie did not specify the piece of armor at issue, referring to it only as gauntlets. But in a thread about the announcement on the Destiny subreddit, a Redditor named xxbiohazrdxx appears to have figured it out. The armor in question appears to be Road Complex AA1, a pair of legendary gauntlets for the Hunter class.

The upper arm region of the gauntlets bears a symbol that, when right-side up, looks like a gray chevron between two horizontal gray bars. Between that symbol and its mirror image lie four vertical white bars. All of these markings appear on a lime green background.

Bungie

But if you’re looking at it horizontally, Road Complex AA1’s design bears a strong resemblance to the logo of Kek, a satirical “religion” created by members of the white nationalist movement that describes itself as the “alt-right.” Here’s some background on Kek from the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hatewatch blog:

Kek “adherents” created a whole cultural mythology around the idea, describing an ancient kingdom called “Kekistan” that was eventually overwhelmed by “Normistan” and “Cuckistan.” They created not only a logo representing Kek — four Ks surrounding an E — but promptly deployed it in a green-and-black banner, which they call the “national flag of Kekistan.”

The Kekistan banner is modeled after a Nazi war flag: The Kek logo sits in the center instead of a swastika, and green replaces red in the color scheme. Note also that the E inside the four K’s looks like three vertical bars. In recent months, white nationalists have flown the Kekistan flag at events across the U.S. — including the “Unite the Right” rally a month ago in Charlottesville, Virginia, in which a white supremacist killed one peaceful protester and injured numerous others.

Southern Poverty Law Center

It’s unclear if Bungie is going to remove the Road Complex AA1 armor from Destiny 2 entirely, or just update its design to change the symbols on it. We’ve reached out for further details, and will update this article with any information we receive. For more on Destiny 2, check out our review-in-progress and our guide.