MachineGames is disappointed that Wolfenstein's war on Nazis is "problematic"

MachineGames’ recent entries in the long-running Wolfenstein series have followed the series’ mantra of slaying the Nazi threat to a T. Unfortunately, the Swedish developer has bizarrely come under fire for the introduction of political violence into a series that has always relied on it.

Speaking to PCGamesInsider, senior game director Andreas Öjerfors revealed that the team is “incredibly disappointed” that the current political climate has made the Wolfenstein series relevant.

“It’s incredibly weird and disappointing,” Öjerfors told PCGamesInsider.biz. “We never meant for our stories to be relevant, we wanted to tell great, interesting stories to the best of our abilities.”

“When we started to talk about Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, we started to get comment online about the theme of the game, fighting the Nazis,” he continued. “Somehow some people felt that was problematic, which is just incredibly disappointing. We’ve seen an increase of right-wing extremism in the Western world. We see that online to a great degree. Right-wing extremists are great at affecting the debate online. And of course, maybe they abused us to whip up some anger when we were making Wolfenstein II.”

Make America Nazi-Free Again. #NoMoreNazis #Wolf2 pic.twitter.com/52OESypw4P

— Wolfenstein (@wolfenstein) October 5, 2017

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus‘ social media campaign revolved around the #PunchANazi social media movement. With the game’s entire theme revolving around the slaying of modern history’s biggest evil, their Make America Nazi-Free Again and #NoMoreNazis push upset a lot of vocal gamers. Wolfenstein publisher Bethesda retorted, simply stating that the Nazi threat was not only bad but also un-American.