Key Takeaways
- Steel City Interactive confirms Ryan Garcia will be removed from Undisputed on October 8.
- Undisputed’s decision to remove Garcia has sparked controversy among the game’s community.
- Undisputed launches on October 11, with 3 days of early access for existing Steam owners.
Undisputed, the upcoming boxing game developed by Steel City Interactive and published by Deep Silver, is removing controversial WBC boxer Ryan Garcia ahead of the game’s October 11 release date. The Undisputed team has confirmed that the fighter will be removed at launch, but users currently playing the game’s career mode via Steam’s early access will be able to use Garcia until a new update is deployed in December.
After releasing exclusively on Steam early access back in January 2023, Steel City Interactive finally confirmed the full release date for Undisputed earlier this year. The highly-anticipated boxing game will be leaving early access and coming to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC on October 11, 2024. The studio will also be giving all Steam early access players the Roy Jones Jr. ’93 pre-order bonus, as well as advance access to play Undisputed‘s 1.0 release from October 8.
Undisputed‘s roster includes the likes of Tyson Fury, Canelo Alvarez, Muhammad Ali, and many more, but the list of fighters will be one boxer lighter come October 11 as Steel City Interactive has announced it will be removing Ryan Garcia from the game. In a new message on the official Undisputed Discord, the studio said it is “following the lead of the World Boxing Council,” who expelled Garcia from the organization earlier this year following the fighter’s use of racial slurs on social media, and removing the 26-year-old from the game.
Undisputed Removes Ryan Garcia
The statement goes on to explain that Ryan Garcia will no longer be playable in local, online, and prize fight game modes from October 8. Players won’t be able to create new career mode saves with the character either, but for existing Undisputed career mode saves that are currently using Ryan Garcia’s character, players will have until December 2024 to wrap things up before a new update removes Garcia from the mode.
The decision to remove the controversial boxer hasn’t gone down well with the community. Not only has the initial announcement received a plethora of thumbs-down and L emojis, but Reddit users are also blasting the decision. “So the WBC now decides who is in the game? Doesn’t make sense,” one user said. They went on to note that Garcia will still go on to box and that Steel City should simply focus on adding as many big-name boxers as possible as opposed to getting involved in Boxing politics.
As EA Sports UFC 4 continues to add new fighters and dominate the combat sports video game scene, Undisputed will be the first new major Boxing game since 2010’s Fight Night Champion. It currently has a “mostly positive” review score on Steam, with fans praising the impressive gameplay and realistic combat.