EA Sports apologizes for censoring Kaepernick’s name in Madden 19
Video game maker EA Sports apologized Thursday for Colin Kaepernick’s name being censored from the soundtrack for “Madden NFL 19.”
A Twitter user noticed the omission from YG’s song “Big Bank,” in which Big Sean references the former NFL quarterback in a guest verse.
“We made an unfortunate mistake with our Madden NFL soundtrack,” EA Sports said in a statement. “Members of our team misunderstood the fact that while we don’t have rights to include Colin Kaepernick in the game, this doesn’t affect soundtracks. We messed up, and the edit should never have happened.”
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The company added that an update to the game available Monday will add Kaepernick’s name back into the soundtrack.
“We meant no disrespect, and we apologize to Colin, to YG and Big Sean, to the NFL, to all of their fans and our players for this mistake,” EA Sports said in the statement.
Big Sean weighed in on the issue on Twitter before EA Sports issued its apology and Kaepernick later thanked the rapper in his own tweet.
{“url”:”https://twitter.com/Kaepernick7/status/1025147789397901313″,”author_name”:”Colin Kaepernick”,”author_url”:”https://twitter.com/Kaepernick7″,”html”:”&#lt;blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”&#gt;&#lt;p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”&#gt;Much love brother! Thank you for having my back!✊� &#lt;a href=”https://t.co/yKz3nBMiPb”&#gt;https://t.co/yKz3nBMiPb&#lt;/a&#gt;&#lt;/p&#gt;— Colin Kaepernick (@Kaepernick7) &#lt;a href=”https://twitter.com/Kaepernick7/status/1025147789397901313?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”&#gt;August 2, 2018&#lt;/a&#gt;&#lt;/blockquote&#gt;n&#lt;script async src=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″&#gt;&#lt;/script&#gt;n”,”width”:550,”height”:null,”type”:”rich”,”cache_age”:”3153600000″,”provider_name”:”Twitter”,”provider_url”:”https://twitter.com”,”version”:”1.0″}
The line referencing Kaepernick, who is in the midst of a collusion suit against NFL owners, says, “Feed me to the wolves, now I lead the pack and s—. You boys all cap, I’m more Colin Kaepernick.”
Kaepernick began kneeling during the national anthem during the 2016 season in an attempt to bring attention to racial injustice and social inequality. The former San Francisco 49ers quarterback opted for free agency after that season but has not received even a tryout since.
