The USA Division of Homeland Safety (DHS) is promising to proceed its marketing campaign of posting memes and recruiting materials primarily based on pop-culture imagery, together with these from the world of video video games. This comes days after it and the White Home promoted pictures on social media depicting President Trump as participant character Grasp Chief, and recruitment adverts encouraging would-be ICE brokers to “Destroy the flood” [sic] (a reference to the Flood, the zombie-like antagonists of the Halo collection).
This promise means that extra sport builders and trade professionals may even see the US authorities use the video games they work on for recruitment functions, or to push unproven claims of excessive crime charges pushed by undocumented immigrants. Recreation File spoke with numerous former Halo franchise builders who condemned the posts, with former collection Jaime Griesemer calling the DHS advert “must offend each Halo fan, no matter political orientation.”
Phrase of DHS’ plans comes from a remark despatched to unbiased journalist Alyssa Mercante, who sought remark from the company over its impromptu advert marketing campaign. “We are going to attain folks the place they’re with content material they’ll relate to and perceive, whether or not that be Halo, Pokémon, Lord of the Rings, or another medium,” an company spokesperson acknowledged, including that it was “laser centered” on pushing messaging spotlighting the aforementioned unproven claims about immigrant crime charges.
In line with Mercante and different journalists, Microsoft declined to touch upon the Halo-themed posts.
The Trump administration continues to embrace game-adjacent ‘meme tradition’
Mercante had beforehand obtained remark from the White Home celebrating the President’s overseeing of the tip of “the console wars,” which was proclaimed by the GameStop X account on Friday after Microsoft introduced Halo: Marketing campaign Developed would debut on the PlayStation 5 in addition to Xbox Sequence X|S. GameStop posted numerous celebratory manipulated pictures of President Trump with the Grasp Chief within the hours afterward.
The DHS beforehand invoked the spirit of video video games in numerous social media messages in September 2025 drawing on imagery and slogans from the Pokémon franchise. The Pokémon Firm (which is partially owned by Nintendo), distanced itself from these posts, saying that “it was not concerned within the creation or distribution of this content material, and permission was not granted for the usage of our mental property.”
These posts adopted numerous promotional pictures earlier in 2025 selling President Trump’s agenda by means of the lens of Disney’s Star Wars collection, AI-generated pictures impressed by Studio Ghibli. Neither firm issued any assertion following these posts, although numerous musicians have constantly pushed again in opposition to their work being utilized by the Administration.
Given the DHS’ sample of leaping from popular culture reference to popular culture reference, different builders might discover their work used to advertise its insurance policies within the subsequent few years.
Recreation Developer has reached out to Microsoft for touch upon this story and can present an replace when the corporate responds.
