A number of Take-Two’s games, from Grand Theft Auto to Red Dead, took their servers down for a couple of hours today to “honor the legacy of George Floyd”. NBA 2k20 did as well, but the basketball game is getting more active with its messaging than just going offline.
One of the game’s clothing stores, normally a hub of microtransaction hell, is now giving away three shirts for free for players to wear on their in-game avatars:
The game also displayed this screen for players first firing it up:
This is what 2K20 looked like earlier in the day, with players not only wearing the shirts as part of in-game protests, but large “Black Lives Matter” posters were put up around the neighbourhood hub world section as well.
For anyone who’s not a regular basketball fan, “I Can’t Breathe” shirts have a particularly relevance here, with NBA superstars wearing them in the wake of Eric Garner’s murder back in 2014.