Sony removes unintentional Stellar Blade art referencing racism

Sony has removed artwork from its upcoming PS5 exclusive Stellar Blade which appeared to reference racial slurs, with the company reportedly saying it was 'unintentional' the phrase was included at all.

Stellar Blade is a story-driven, third-person, action-adventure game that's due to be released on April 26.

Gamers play as a character called Eve, an 'angel' from a space colony tasked with fighting off an invading species known as the Naytiba in a post-apocalyptic world.

Ahead of its release, the game has been shared with reviewers so they can play it and share their thoughts with the embargo on its content being shared understood to have lifted on April 24.

But during the course of these playthroughs, a number of reviewers found what appeared to be a reference to racist slurs.

It's said graffiti of the word 'hard' appears throughout the game in different locations.

The 'R Shop' references Roxanne, who is one of the game's information brokers.

In one location, these two have been spotted side-by-side of each other.

In a statement to IGN, Sony said: "The placement of two graphics near each other in Stellar Blade resulted in an unintentional objectionable phrase.

"Shift Up had no intention of creating offensive artwork and will be replacing the graffiti for the Day 1 patch."

Shift Up is the developer of the game with Sony as its publisher.

True to its word, the graffiti in this location has already been replaced in an update.

While it will be removed for players who digitally download the game, those who have bought disc copies will have it removed through the downloadable Day 1 patch update, according to IGN.

A number of reviews of the game have already been posted, with IGN scoring the game seven out of 10, Games Radar rating it 3.5 out of five and a Metacritic score of 82 at the time of writing.

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