343 Studios Accused of Racism by Over 343 Twitter Users For Poorly Executed Juneteenth Inclusion

With Juneteenth around the corner, corporations have started to jump headfirst into the new federal holiday, sometimes with reckless abandon. Even when it comes to pre-established, long running things, like Black History Month, there are corporate blunders year after year, so it was expected that someone would make a big Juneteenth miscue.

Apparently, the honor goes to Halo developer 343 Studios, who tried to join in on the fun with a cosmetic update pushed to Halo Infinite. Unfortunately, the cosmetic that was pushed to the game was named "Bonobo," which is the name of a great ape, inciting tensions on social media as people claimed the name choice was racist.

Juneteenth Banner and the Pallettes name is Bonobo dog what the hell is @Halo and 343 smoking on god pic.twitter.com/Hrk0dLKz7I

— Robot Chicken Boba Fett (@ECH0xTV) June 14, 2022

Halo named a junenteenth cosmetic fucking bonobo pic.twitter.com/1rL9oiSCNc

— Breastmilk Gaming (@SuckCowgirlTits) June 16, 2022

In some disgusting news. Halo added a nameplate for Juneteenth, a holiday which celebrates the freedom of those who were enslaved, and they decided to name it Bonobo, after an ape…

It has since been “patched” and the name has been changed pic.twitter.com/YkE9yolNoO

— Jake Lucky (@JakeSucky) June 14, 2022

🧵Alright y’all buckle TF up. You have got to admit when your faves are problematic. So someone over at @halo thought it would be real funny to name the Juneteenth nameplate Bonobo (go Google it if you need to, I’ll wait) and everybody and their auntie twice removed except…

— Dr. Saffista ✊🏾🏳️‍🌈 (@NYMG_saffista) June 15, 2022

Though the issue was quickly patched out by the company, there were still some online who went to bat for them, defending the accident and trying to make sense of it for others.

The reason given, which others declared was flimsy at best, was that an older program used by Bungie, which was then handed over to 343 along with Halo, was called "Bonobo" and that the name was chosen out of convenience, not malice. Evidence was then found via old Bungie dev footage that shows the Bonobo program in action, at least adding a layer of legitimacy to the claim of innocence.

So the emblem situation was related to an old tag editor from the bungie days (assuming it’s still used today) that had the name ‘Bonobo’.
Just a very unfortunate circumstance to happen.
It’s very hard to believe it was intentional and I’m glad it’s resolved now.

— HaloVFX (@Halo_VFX) June 15, 2022

Since I saw 343 accidentally named the Halo Infinite Juneteenth emblem as Bonobo.

Here is literally the program that was in an old Bungie Vidoc. pic.twitter.com/ACzW3JBNj9

— Mint Blitz (@MintBlitz) June 15, 2022

As usual whenever something has to do with gaming, there's often another, unseen side to it. In this case, with Halo being a Microsoft product, it wasn't long before Sony fans came out of the woodwork to use this as a sort of "gotcha moment" against the Xbox community, which many felt was an odd take.

Shout out to all the Bonobo ass Xbots on this app who love to police the conduct of the Playstation community but remain silent when @Halo insults the black community.

Yall the real MVP pic.twitter.com/YlP4Hk0A7l

— STIIX (triangle strategy ) (@getonthestiix) June 15, 2022