There does not seem to be any way that the phrases “Slave Packing” and “minigame” could be used in the same sentence without sounding horribly wrong, and Danish studio Serious Games Interactive learned this lesson firsthand after sparking widespread outrage with a Tetris-like minigame that tasked players with packing as many people into the bowels of a slave ship as possible.

The game at the center of this controversy is Playing History 2: Slave Trade, a sort of educational game for students to learn about the horror’s of the slave trade.

“Travel back in time to the 18th century and witness the horrors of the trans-Atlantic slave trade firsthand,” the Steam page for the game says. “In this episode, you will be working as young slave steward on a ship crossing the Atlantic. You are to serve the captain and be his eyes and ears – reporting any suspicious activities is your duty. But what do you do, when you realize that your own sister has been captured by the slave traders?”

According to the game’s description, its target audience is student between the ages of 11 and 14. The game itself is a cartoony point-and-click game where players pick up items and navigate through dialogue options as they learn about how the slave trade functioned between Africa, the American colonies, and Europe.

The bulk of the gameplay is rather tame, if a little too cheery, but the feature that set off the most outrage was a minigame that takes place when the player has to load a slave ship as full as possible by playing a Tetris-like minigame called “Slave Packing,” with the usual Tetris pieces replaced by contorted slaves.

After people reacted strongly to the minigame, the developer made the decision to remove it from the game entirely.

“The game and trailer has been updated. Slave Tetris has been removed as it was perceived to be extremely insensitive by some people,” the developers said in an update on Steam. “This overshadowed the educational goal of the game. Apologies to people who was offended by us using game mechanics to underline the point of how inhumane slavery was. The goal was to enlighten and educate people – not to get sidetracked discussing a small 15 secs part of the game.”

So, basically the dev is sorry if you had a problem and didn’t understand what they were trying to do there. #sorrynotsorry

Screenshot via Jim Sterling | YouTube