The hit mobile game Dislyte has come under fire for its latest character trailer, featuring a racist depiction of Black people with one of its background NPCs. The trailer was quickly pulled, updated, and reuploaded.
The background character in question can be seen having a drink for a brief moment—they aren't the new hero or the highlight of the video, but attention was quickly drawn to them. In the original footage, they had a Minstrel-like depiction with highlighted lips and ashy-black skin. The updated trailer alters their appearance to have far less offensive characteristics.
Minstrels are racist caricatures of Black people, also found in Golliwoggs. Similarly, Golliwoggs have ashy black skin and highlighted lips, just as with this background NPC. Naturally, this incurred backlash, enough that the video was taken down with an amended one uploaded after, removing these racist characteristics.
As seen in the before and after screenshots above, their design was drastically overhauled (as pointed out and shared in a ResetEra thread). The lighting has also been updated, changing the colour of their hair. However, the official Dislyte social media accounts have not addressed nor apologised for the depiction. Although plenty of commenters were quick to highlight the problem and call Dislyte out.
You can find them in the trailer at 1:43 appearing for only two seconds, but the depiction was so blatant that it was noticed and called out almost immediately despite the short window. While it has been replaced now, many are asking how the design made it into the final trailer cut to begin with. Some also cited the game's otherwise positive diversity and representation as making this doubly confusing. Others note that, in 2D animation such as this, Black characters are often white-washed to have lighter skin, although this example is a much more obvious problem than before.
"The game has really good diversity in my opinion," the ResetEra thread OP said. "If you look up the character designs, [there's] a lot of great Black characters, so this is really surprising."