Insomniac’s Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 has had, all things considered, a pretty spectacular release. With high reviewer scores across the board as well as an amazing 2.5 million copies sold 24 hours after release everything seemed to be going Insomniac’s way with their latest success. However, it seems the honeymoon period might be ending soon, as players have progressed through the game many couldn’t help but notice a pretty glaring issue: Miles Morales, who is half Puerto Rican, for some reason has a Cuban flag in his apartment.

Miles is Cuban now? I’m so confused y’all. #SpiderMan2PS5 pic.twitter.com/xQt40ifPux

— The Black Viking (@TheBlackViking3) October 21, 2023

This mistake has sparked a pretty big controversy among the playerbase. The Cuban flag and the Puerto Rican flag are similar, and for a singular regular person this would be a relatively easy mistake to make, but for a major AAA studio with several high paid eyes on the game at all times this slip up, that could have been solved by a 2 second Google search, has people raising their eyebrows in regards to the internal discussion at Insomniac.

Several believe that such an easy, yet vital, confusion of the two flags is an indication of the internal lack of care about important issues from the studio. Especially with a game like Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 which is very happy to lean on its diverse cast and world. This made internet investigators dig even deeper and they discovered that the Middle Eastern version of the game had removed all mentions of the LGBT.

It’s confirmed. Spiderman 2 Middle East version has removed LGBT dialogues, side missions, and all gender spectrum flags

Are you going to insult me too or accept the corporation see your identity as pure money?

To the gay people who defend me just for showing the truth.Thanks pic.twitter.com/VXbGoTDqUR

— LearningTheLaw (@Mangalawyer) October 23, 2023

This self-censorship, the flag, and even how the Spanish characters speak in the non-gendered “Latinx” version of the language (a version of the language that is controversial among Spanish speakers) has caused players to criticize Insomniac’s perception of the world, with many calling the studio out for being sheltered and ignorant of cultures outside of their own and their words of love and diversity to be shallow and hollow.

Here is something interesting for Latinos

Spider-man 2 has (Inclusive language) For those English speakers, this will be like spreading Latinx all over the game.

Now you can predict what NPC has fatherless behavior. pic.twitter.com/W4QFlfNVzc

— LearningTheLaw (@Mangalawyer) October 17, 2023

Devs were too busy adding Latinx Spanish to both the Latam and Spain dubs to check if they had the right flag. https://t.co/5aZfDkbLjy

— Kaleb (@KalebPrime) October 22, 2023

Despite all this, as reported by Culture Crave Insomniac is going to patch the flag in Miles’ apartment and likely any other mistakes regarding the Puerto Rican flag as well as Miles’ heritage.

Insomniac says they’re fixing the flag in Miles Morales’ apartment in #SpiderMan2

They accidentally put Cuba’s flag instead of Puerto Rico’s pic.twitter.com/LoQwBleb7h

— Culture Crave 🍿 (@CultureCrave) October 22, 2023

But once dug up these questions can’t be buried, and these questions surround the legitimacy of how much Insomniac, and likely the AAA developer space as a whole, cares about inclusivity. Even with this mix-up likely being a legitimate oversight, these revelations will almost definitely leave a stain on the company’s reputation and debates surrounding video game culture in the future will bring this incident up as an example of corporate laziness at best and ignorance at worst.