In a statement provided to Kotaku, Ubisoft say that neither the company nor the game share Lewis’s opinions, which they say they’d now been informed about. Ubisoft don’t appear to really name “the controversy” but one particular source of Lewis’s opinions that people have found objectionable is a 2017 article in The Times titled “A man can’t just say he has turned into a woman”. Lewis is a self-proclaimed feminist who claims to support trans rights but disagreed with proposed legislation which would have allowed trans people to legally change their gender through self-identification. Her article uses familiar hand-wringing about biological sex, transgender identification as a trend, and people with penises in women’s changing rooms. This all comes during a year when Ubisoft has gotten a lot of attention for reported sexism, racism, homophobia, and harassment within the company. Neither that, nor Lewis’s real-world opinions square with the inclusive hacktivist ideals that you’d imagine Ubisoft were going for in fictional London.
