Google-owned video game sent players to Nazi camps
Company apologizes for Niantic Labs’ game 'Ingress,' which included Auschwitz, Dachau as battle locations
A Google gaming subsidiary included Nazi concentration-camp sites as locations in a video game. The company, Niantic Labs, has since apologized.
Niantic Labs said players of “Ingress” can propose historic locations and monuments for inclusion in the game, in which two factions use smartphones to battle for control of these sites. The German weekly Die Zeit reported Thursday that some of the sites, known as “portals,” were located within concentration camps such as Auschwitz, Dachau and Sachsenhausen.
Gabriele Hammermann, director of the memorial site at Dachau, told the dpa news agency that Google’s actions were a humiliation for victims and relatives of the Nazi camps.
The head of the Sachsenhausen Memorial, Günter Morsch, told Die Zeit: “All of us here are completely appalled. This is most definitely no place for video games,” according to The Telegraph.
In a statement to The Associated Press, Niantic Labs’ founder John Hanke said the company has begun removing the offending sites from the game. He commented, “We apologize that this has happened.”