Mass Effect dev calls out Deus Ex’s ‘Augs Lives Matter’ slogan as incompetent

The Deus Ex: Mankind Divided team has landed themselves in hot water over a concept art image that has been criticised as being  an appropriation of the Black Lives Matter movement. In the image, as seen above, there are a number of banners, the biggest of which reads "Augs Lives Matter." The other signs, read "No more Augs," "Augs out" and "Purity First," however those are not the focus of the issue.

The game itself focuses on a 'Mechanical Apartheid,' where humans call for a division between the augmented and the unaugmented.

Spearheading the discussion on the issue is BioWare gameplay designer Manveer Heir, who quickly fell into an argument with Andre Vu, the Executive Brand Director at Eidos-Montreal who is working with Deus Ex.

“Many video game studios don’t have enough diversity,” wrote Heir. “But when you outright f**kup by appropriating [Black Lives Matter] you deserve to get called out.” After calling out the team, Vu responded saying that they team had thought up the slogan prior to the current events and that it was an "unfortunate coincidence."

Vu went on to point out that he understands the current tension, being a minority himself, and tried to keep the focus of the argument about the "fictional world and game." Heir explained that Square Enix should have changed the "Augs Lives Matter" slogan like the show Archer changed the name of their secret spy organization 'ISIS' after the actual ISIS rose up in the real world.

Vu's final response to Heir was, "I get your point, but we never used Black Lives Matter, we don't reference to the current issues happening in the world. Don't try to spread hate, thanks."

While the debate simmered out on Twitter, Polygon contacted Heir for more context on his point:

Someone in marketing should have noticed the image could easily be confused as criticism of Black Lives Matter and not used it to market the game, since there is no way to provide full context from just a handful of concept art," Heir said.

"I accept Mr. Vu's assertion that it was coincidental, but that doesn't negate my criticism. It is bad optics and marketing departments, of all departments, should understand optics and how to react to the current state of the actual world."

You can see the full discussion between the two here.