Police in Kenosha, Wisconsin shot the 29 year-old Daniel Blake in the back multiple times, leading to renewed protests against police brutality in Wisconsin and other parts of the United States.
As a show of solidarity with the protest, several NBA and WNBA teams refused to participate in their playoffs. 2K Sports, developer of the NBA 2K series and the upcoming NBA 2K21, released a statement of support to Gamespot, saying:
"We at 2K stand against racial injustice and the continued violence against the Black community. NBA 2K has a strong community. We have been heartened by seeing our community use 2K as a place to congregate and honour movements in their own way.
"It is imperative that people have places and ways to share their voice during these times, and it is our aim to keep making 2K a palace that our players feel comfortable expressing themselves.
"As for the NBA and WNBA, we strongly support the players and the leagues using their platform to demonstrate against the shooting of Jacob Blake."
When this year's Black Lives Matter protests began in June, 2K Games gave players in-game shirts saying "I can't breathe" and "Black Lives Matter". They were also among the game developers taking their games offline for 2 hours in support of Blackout Day on July 7. The idea of Blackout Day was originally to only spend money with Black-owned businesses, but has expanded to a period of silence during the protests against police brutality, which can involve websites not posting content, Streamers pausing their activities and various similar actions to show solidarity with the protests and black people in general.
2K Games has also posted the first paragraph of the statement to the official NBA2K21 twitter account.
