American video game publisher Activision said Friday that it was removing controversial footage from its newly released “Call of Duty” game after an outcry in South Korea over the inclusion of real-life footage from a deadly 2022 Halloween crowd crush in Seoul. Last week’s global release of “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4” came days before the Oct. 29 anniversary of the disaster in the South Korean capital’s nightlife district of Itaewon, where a crowd of tens of thousands of partygoers surged beyond control in a narrow alley, causing nearly 160 deaths. The game, which takes place amid a fictional North Korean invasion of the South, features about 10 seconds of heavily edited footage of the tragedy to illustrate what the aftermath of a Pyongyang attack might look like, though it does not refer to the Itaewon crowd crush directly.
Groups representing families of the crowd crush victims had demanded that the footage be removed, saying it was appalling that the game had directly reproduced actual scenes of people performing CPR “while victims lay on the cold streets amid chaos and desperation.” “If the game developer has even the slightest sense of respect and empathy for the victims of the Itaewon disaster, it should promptly take corrective action,” the Itaewon Disaster Bereaved Families Association and Itaewon Disaster Citizens’ Countermeasures Committee said in a joint statement Friday. The California-based game publisher, Activision, apologized in a statement and said the footage would be completely removed through a game update scheduled for release Nov. 12. Nearly two dozen officials have been charged in the investigation, which is still underway, while three former police officers have been jailed.
On Thursday, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung vowed that his government would “uncover the truth.” “On that day, when what should have been a joyful autumn night turned into the scene of a horrific tragedy, the state was nowhere to be found,” he said in a statement on X. Lee Jin Woo, whose younger sister was 28 when she died in the crowd crush, told NBC News that he had played the new “Call of Duty” game and didn’t notice the Itaewon footage at first. Though the “Call of Duty” invasion is fictional, it draws on North Korea’s real-life capture of Seoul in 1950 during the Korean War.
The conflict ended in 1953 with an armistice instead of a peace treaty, and the two Koreas remain technically at war. Tensions between the North and South have escalated in recent weeks, with the two countries embroiled in a standoff along their heavily militarized border. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has rebuffed diplomatic outreach from Washington and Seoul as he continues to advance his nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
With its “Call of Duty” franchise struggling to sustain interest in recent years, the Microsoft-owned Activision used “Modern Warfare 4” to deliver what fans loved about its previous games: a hyperrealistic military shooter. It’s getting back to a grounded military shooter. Making it cinematic, making it authentic and bringing that edge back that ‘Call of Duty’ is known for,” he said.
That approach appears to have worked. As of Friday, “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4” was the top-selling game in both South Korea and the United States on Steam, an online PC game distribution platform.
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