Activision announced on Friday, October 30, that it will remove from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 the real footage of the Itaewon crowd crush in Seoul used in the game. The complete removal comes in the November 12 update.
Modern Warfare 4’s campaign, released last week, is set during a fictional North Korean invasion of South Korea. To show the aftermath of an attack, the game uses about 10 seconds of edited news footage of the October 29, 2022 disaster, when a crowd became trapped in an alley in the Itaewon district during Halloween celebrations and nearly 160 people died. The game does not name the tragedy.
Groups representing the victims’ families asked for the removal. In a joint statement, they said it was appalling to see scenes of citizens performing CPR while victims lay on the street used in a game. Activision apologized, offered its condolences and said that, by using real news footage to build the fictional narrative, it “never intended to evoke any tragic incident, including the Itaewon disaster, or to trivialize the suffering” of the victims.
The bereaved families’ association welcomed the decision but told the BBC it had not received a direct apology from the company. October 29 marked four years since the disaster this week.
Source: Activision (statement), via BBC and NBC News.
