‘Destiny 2’ Developer Bungie Attempts To Hide Twitter Replies After Receiving Backlash Over Use Of “Latin/a/e/o/x/” In Recent ‘Latin@Bungie’ Announcement
In a questionable attempt to honor their own Latin American employee base, Destiny 2 developer Bungie has opened Hispanic Heritage Month by not only unveiling Latin@Bungie, an internal group initiative meant to help bolster the relevant representation in both their company and games, but actively attempting to ignore any and all criticisms directed towards their announcement’s use of the term “Latin/a/e/o/x”
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The latest of the developer’s Inclusion, Diversity, & Equity Association (IDEA) groups, Latin@Bungie is the latest of Bungie’s many “employee resource groups”, the collective of which are meant “to help Bungie employees connect with people of similar cultural backgrounds and their supportive allies”.
“These groups serve as a resource for advice; a forum to share thoughts and perspectives; and a way to amplify and celebrate cultures, not only in person, but also in our games,” explains the developer on their official blog post announcing the group’s existence.
“Latin@Bungie first began in 2022 as a way to celebrate our identity, acknowledge our different experiences, help educate the Bungie community about Latin and Hispanic culture, and support our local communities,” recalled the developer. “Ultimately, we aim to improve Latin culture representation in our games and bolster the representation of employees with a Latin or Hispanic background in our company. In turn, we hope that will result in better connections between our games and our gamers.”
“As a group, we embrace that our culture is rich and diverse,” Bungie further detailed. “We celebrate that the ties that bind us are wide-reaching and well beyond any monolithic assumptions that society might have about people who are Latin and Hispanic. Being ‘Latin/a/e/o/x’ is more than just a location on a map, just as being ‘Hispanic’ is more than the language we might speak. It is important for us to dive deeper into not only what unifies us, but how we can grow as a culture to be more inclusive and equitable, such as championing racial justice, women’s rights, and LGBTQIA+ causes.”
In bringing their announcement to a close, Bungie ultimately asserted, “And of course, no community is complete without celebrating meaningful cultural touchstones, holidays, favorite recipes, and the rich variety of our talented music scene.”
“We look forward to sharing our initiatives with you in the months and years to come,” they concluded. “We hope that through our Latin@Bungie efforts we can have a positive impact in our global community, our company, and our games.”
But given the growing disdain among Latin Americans for any such ‘performatively progressive’ terms as ‘Latinx’ or ‘Latine’, which many see as an attempt to erase their heritage by erasing the gendered syntax rules of various Latin languages, rather than applause, Bungie’s appeal to its “Latin/a/e/o/x” community was instead mainly met with criticism and mockery from the public at large.
However, rather than either acknowledging fans’ issue with their attempt at inclusion or allowing the negative backlash to run its course, Bungie – in a move that rarely ever works out for anyone – responded to this negative reception on Twitter by attempting to ‘hide’ any such replies to their announcement tweet.
“Yeah, it’s Latino or Latina” wrote @M3cha909, whose hidden-by-Bungie-reply has garnered over thirteen-thousand likes as of this article’s writing.
“There’s only Latino or Latina,” likewise read @Spiy_Halo’s response. “No Latino person asked for latinx. Y’all should be ashamed for posting this. Call me a slur instead of this.”
“Which white (non-hispanic) employee wrote this?” questioned @BasedDende.
Unfortunately for Bungie, despite their best attempts to control the narrative around their language, their Latin@Bungie announcement tweet was eventually hit with a critical community note.
“The term Latino and Hispanic should not be used interchangeably since their meanings describe qualities of two different populations that sometimes overlap and sometimes don’t,” read the contextual explanation. “Latinx its a term that most of the Latino population don’t identify.”
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