The video game, ‘Call of Duty: Vanguard’ received backlash online for disrespecting Holy Quran in its Zombie mode. The game showed the pages of the Holy Quran scattered on the floor.
On Wednesday, a few people shared the images of the religious texts in the game and called for its ban. Taking up the issue, Activision, removed the scene and apologized to the gamers and users.
Call of Duty Middle East released the message of apology on its Twitter platform in Arabic. The message, however, was not translated into English for its other platforms like America.
— Call of Duty Middle East (@CallofDutyARA) November 11, 2021
The problem was seen by a Twitter user named BKTOOR who shared several images of the map and pages in Arabic script.
“Brothers, I see pages of the Qur’an on the ground in the zombie map. I see that it should be removed as soon as possible if it is correct,” said the Twitter user. The tweet swiftly garnered the attention of users and condemnation started to pour in for the video game for the blunder that was easily avoidable.
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In its apology, Activision did not describe the offensive content in its statement but acknowledged that “there was insensitive content to the Muslim community mistakenly included last week, and has since been removed from the game.”
يا اخوان انا اشوف صفحات من القران في الارض في خريطة Zombie ارى انه يجب ان تزال باسرع وقت اذا كانت صحيحة @playstationsa @CallofdutyARA#Vanguard #PS5Share, #CallofDutyVanguard pic.twitter.com/1WZLsMYbML
— ᴮᴷᵀᴼᴼᴿ (@BKTO0R) November 10, 2021
“It should never have appeared as it did in-game,” the company said in a statement provided to Polygon and other media outlets. “We deeply apologize. We are taking immediate steps internally to address the situation to prevent such occurrences in the future.”
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The company did not tell the reason for not posting the message on other platforms. Perhaps the company did not want to cause further damage than it already had with the negative campaign.