The Bolivian government has filed a formal complaint against the representation of its country as a “violent, anarchic narco-state” in Ubisoft’s latest video game.
First revealed in 2015, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands is due for an international release on Playstation 4, Xbox One and PC later this week.
Developed by French video game development and publishing giant Ubisoft, the game follows a team of special forces operatives who infiltrate and then wage a guerrilla war against a fictional version of the Bolivian government, taken over by a Mexican drug cartel.
Unfortunately, the real-world Bolivian government was not particularly thrilled with that game and have taken umbridge with it.
As reported by Reuters last week, Bolivian Interior Minister Carlos Romero delivered a letter to the French Embassy in Bolivia.
Romero requested that the French government intervene to prevent the game’s release, adding that a possible legal action against the French company was a possibility if all else failed.
“We have the standing to do it (take legal action), but at first we prefer to go the route of diplomatic negotiation,” he said.
Ubisoft insist the game is “a work of fiction”.
“Like all Tom Clancy’s games from Ubisoft, the game takes place in a modern universe inspired by reality, but the characters, locations and stories are all fantasies created solely for entertainment purposes. Bolivia was chosen as the background of this game based on its magnificent landscapes and rich culture. While the game’s premise imagines a different reality than the one that exists in Bolivia today, we do hope that the in-game world comes close to representing the country’s beautiful topography, and that players enjoy exploring the diverse and open landscapes it moved us to create,” they said in a statement.
