Next month’s Madden NFL 21 is being altered at the last minute to remove mentions of the Washington Redskins team name and logo imagery, a rep for publisher Electronic Arts has told Kotaku.
This comes at the end of a week that began with the NFL team’s management finally listening to calls for the team’s racist name to be changed.
“We are pleased to see Washington’s decision to change their team name and visual identity,” the rep said. “We are quickly working to update Madden NFL 21 to feature a generic Washington team, while we await final word on the updated team name and logo design.”
Because the game is nearly ready to ship for its August 25 release, the version that comes out on disc will still include the former name and logo, but EA said that connecting to the internet will trigger an update that will remove them.
The Washington team hasn’t announced a new name yet, so EA will initially replace the old branding with a generically-named Washington team.
“Changes to the name and logo will come via title updates that will download automatically,” the EA rep explained. “The first changes will be available to our EA Access players and will include audio/commentary updates; motion graphics and presentation updates; stadium art, environments, crowd gear and signage updates; and uniform updates. Players may continue to see some outdated Washington references in other areas of the game at launch, but we are committed to removing all of those from the game in additional title updates coming shortly after launch.”