The recently-released Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled launched to a lot of love from players, but not everyone was pleased after a recent update introduced a skin that was deemed ‘racist’ by some in the community.
Over on ResetERA [via ComicBook], a discussion surrounding the ‘Watermelon Tawna’ skin was started, and it seems to have led to the skin being pulled from the game.
“Tawna and the Nitro Squad are characters that were introduced in the latest content update for the game. Each character has a set of skins and one of the ones for Tawna is pretty insensitive in my opinion. One of her skins changes the fur color of Tawna to a much darker tone and is called Watermelon Tawna,” wrote user Twenty5Thousand, who added images into the post.
“Frankly I find this to be pretty upsetting and I hope this was something done out of ignorance. I hope bringing this to the developer’s attention will lead to change. Personally I would try to get rid of the watermelon motif and name.”
It looks like the skin, which has drawn comparisons to racial stereotypes of black people, has now been pulled from the game, though developer Beenox hasn’t issued a statement on the matter.
Instead of ‘Watermelon Tawna’ we now have the updated version: ‘Summertime Tawna,’ who no longer has the watermelon clothes and the darker skin.
Similarly, the character that was introduced to the game as ‘White Tawna’ is now named ‘White Tiger Tawna,’ and other characters with “White” or “Black” in their names have also seen a slight revision of their monikers from the developers.
The characters were added into the game in a recent update as a part of the game’s first Grand Prix season, which started on July 3.
Featured Image Credit: Activision