Indiegala gets into hot water for promoting video game sale with offensive meme

Online game store Indiegala has come under a lot of fire recently for posting a potentially offensive meme to promote a sale, a marketing fiasco against which even the game's developer has complained.

Indiegala is an online store that promotes and sells Steam keys for independently-developed games. While the store is quite popular among gamers who prefer indie titles, the company has recently got into hot water for promoting a video game sale with an offensive Islamophobic meme.

In an apparent marketing fiasco, Indiegala promoted the first-person-shooter game Insurgency with a meme that might have alienated thousands of potential buyers.

The meme, which has been posted on official Indiegala accounts on various platforms, has caused backlash from thousands of users. Many have criticized it for being in poor taste, and for inciting hate against Islam. Others have also called out Indiegala for promoting the wrong meaning of the word "Allahu Akbar", and associating it with terrorism unjustly. In fact, even the developer of the game has demanded that the tweet be removed from Twitter, labeling it as offensive.

@IndieGala Remove this tweet. We do NOT accept you promoting our game in this offensive manner.
— Insurgency (@insurgencygame) December 22, 2016

While the meme has been removed from Indiegala's Twitter profile, it is still available for viewing on the store's Facebook account, where it is drawing lots of controversy. Indiegala is yet to publicly respond to the backlash.

Source: Rami Ismail (Twitter) via Engadget