Why Fans Are Furious With Injustice 2
Fans are very upset with "Injustice 2 Mobile" after the developer held a questionable in-game event for Pride Month. As reported by Kotaku, "Injustice 2 Mobile" set up a community event in celebration for Pride Month, during which players would need to collectively defeat Entangling Poison Ivy up to 500,000 times. The issue with this event is that Poison Ivy is a canonically bisexual character, with many modern iterations even depicting her in a relationship with Harley Quinn.
The event offered specific rewards for both Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy in-game, so it could be viewed as the developers giving a nod to that relationship. Kotaku reports that a number of ResetEra users began pointed out the hypocrisy of celebrating pride month by encouraging players to quite literally take down an LGBTQIA+ character. The issue is not that a bisexual character is getting beat up (because every character in Injustice 2 gets beat up at some point), but more that this challenge was specifically issued as a way of somehow celebrating Pride Month.
As reported by Pink News, a now-deleted tweet from the official "Injustice 2 Mobile" Twitter account drove home the ridiculousness of this event. The tweet celebrated the fact that players had taken down Poison Ivy 175,000 times, with only 225,000 more takedowns to go before the first tier reward. The tweet was punctuated by a Pride hashtag.
Injustice 2 Mobile apology
The "Injustice 2 Mobile" Twitter account (which has changed its avatar and banner to be Pride-themed for the month of June) has issued an apology for the event, writing, "We recognize associating our latest Global Challenge with Pride was insensitive and inappropriate ... we should actively engage in efforts to end LGBTQIA+ violence, not normalize it."
In a response to someone asking if the rewards will still be given out, the account tweeted, "Rewards earned from this Challenge will not be removed from your profile and will be sent tomorrow after it's complete," In other words, it seems as though the challenge will not be pulled early, nor will the rewards be cancelled.
While some fans have commended the developer for recognizing the mistake and publicly apologizing for it, others have expressed their frustration with the fact that, at least for now, the event isn't being replaced with something more positive in celebration of Pride Month.