Update: The story has now been picked up by more known news sites, certainly in the UK for one - the Independent, the Mirror, Daily Mail and even TMZ for the international viewers and US too.
I suppose we will wait and see if we get an official response from IOI/JCVD, though I imagine the latter’s lawyers are already aware and they’re discussing what to do.
Like I said, definitely not IOI’s week, or month…
Solution: Replace every celebrET with Keanu Reeves.
And get sexual accusations against him
It’s the IOI curse.
The moment they become an elusive target, they cause trouble IRL
I expect an official announcement from IOI imminently if they intend to pull the plug on the ET, like what they did with the Disrupter ET. Now other news sites have started spreading it like wildfire, it’s only a matter of time before it forces IOI’s hand.
To avoid any potential bad press from some Celebrities, I wouldn’t be against IOI just sticking to regular Elusive Targets in the future to be honest.
My prediction: Content will not get pulled until this case has gone through the courts and JCVD is found guilty or liable. That will take time. I doubt IOI will comment until the case is closed, and only then if JCVD is guilty.
My related thoughts: Exploitation is bad. Trafficking is bad. Sexual abuse is bad. I will always support victims of oppression, even if the alternative provides me entertainment value. Basically, if you think losing gaming content is difficult, wait till you hear how victims feel. Choose empathy.
I love that Screen Rant just doesn’t care and keeps sitting comfortably in the middle 
IO should pick someone more sensible as the next celebrity ET, like Kevin Spacey.
Or maybe better someone like Donald Sutherland who would not care less?
Gotta admit, when I first saw this, I thought it might be an April Fools with questionable taste, but what are the odds?
If this turns out to be true, I would just like to politely mention that a Bonus Mission with fictional characters is a lot less likely to be the focus of some controversy.
Are we just ignoring the fact that Landslide; the gold standard in Bonus missions – the mission players always cite whenever such a conversation is raised about making new bonus missions, has a target that has the face of, and is very clearly based on in the backstory and behaviour of, Silvio Berlusconi.
Hell, look at any of the main missions, and you can see resemblances to a lot of celebrities (some more flattering than others).
It being an ET mission with a celebrity does not make it any less likely in courting controversy for the game. IO have been playing with fire and making fun of celebrities and figures of society for a while now, and I’m more surprised nothing has come of it so far.
Meh… a parody of a real person is not the same.
To be fair that Gold standard is because of the repurposed Sapienza Map and theming and not the target. The map is highly praised for its immersion and design and not so much the target.
Parody still invites controversy, on some level. It is the same effect, even if it started out differently.
The similarities don’t champion Burlusconi. The celebrity ETs are supposed to be there bc the player base finds the people fun and their entry into the game is designed to bring in new players.
The guy who is kinda based off (whichever) target may not even be recognized by the player. The game wasn’t using Silvio Burlusconi to promote itself.
If you know your politics, it’s pretty hard to not recognise Abiatti as Berlusconi, considering his mugshot is extremely smug looking (and Abiatti matches pretty much any photo you see of him where he has said shit-eating grin). Of course, that’s not everybody, but I didn’t know who Dmitri Vegas was until I was told, so it goes both ways. That wasn’t even an uncommon sentiment, it was quite a baffling crossover of Hitman and a techno music artist.
I can’t imagine the venn diagram of the space between the two fanbases being that large.
Hell, I keep calling Vegas “Alexios Laskaridas” on occasion because I keep forgetting he’s playing a character and that’s not his actual name, and Vegas’s inclusion is only a year old.
That’s not specific to bringing in celebrities, though. The bonus missions were a seperate DLC initially. Is that not the same idea?
That’s…a reasonable point, fair play. Back in 2016, the most the DLC got advertised was via the store page/ IO tweeting about it, they never offered any connection between who targets were based on.
Fun fact, I actually bought both the GOTY DLC and the bonus missions DLC on Linux, so all that money went to Feral Interactive (who ported the 2016 game to Linux natively).
I have to admit that I have no idea who that is, though if that might be case, I feel like theres still a huge diffrence between taking inspiration from some person, but not naming them and a CelebET. The former one could be missed a lot more easily by not making the connection or simply not knowing who the person is, however you would have to activily try to “miss” that Max Valiant is played by Van Damme as he not only looks like him, but is also voiced by him, shown in the promotional trailer and appears in the credits.
Not trying to undermind your point, but I just feel like if you really wanted to, you could find alot more characters who are inspired by some real person, Robert Knox for example.
Interestingly concept art of him looked much more like Geert Wilders.
Crossover Targets would be safer than Celeb-ET targets.
