After the outcry from the Korean community and families of the victims, Activision is pulling a small section of real tragedy footage from the Modern Warfare 4. It’s clear that Activision recognized the pain of incorporating real footage from the 2022 Itaewon crowd crush disaster into their fake combat game. It’s all thanks to the swift backlash that the community showed after the drop, and official statements from the people affected by the disaster.
Activision apologizes and deletes Itaewon crowd crush scene from Modern Warfare 4
The offending footage was a three-second piece of a frantic scene following the disaster. Relatives of the victims called it terrifying, as they saw how this game took the hopeless reality of people doing CPR on cold roads and moved it into the virtual world. The folks at Activision made a formal apology to the families of the deceased and anyone else who felt any pain over the event.
The patch that’s taking this offending stuff out targets the specific visual that caused the controversy. To be clear, the footage that’s being removed is actually getting deleted as part of the next upcoming update to the game. According to Activision, they want to give their deepest condolences and apologies to the victims and families.
Right after we covered the last update for Modern Warfare 4 and how people were talking about balance and stability issues, we now have this situation at hand. It really speaks to the sensitive nature of incorporating real disaster footage into entertainment media. At least in this instance, Activision is making a pledge to remove the footage to resolve the concerns of the Korean gaming community.
Source: IXBT
They should have left it out entirely. This is not how you handle real tragedy.