Activision has issued an apology over its “insensitive” use of the Quran in Call Of Duty: Vanguard, and removed the offending content from the game.
Earlier this week, it emerged that pages of the Quran had been scattered across the floor of a zombies map in the recently released World War II shooter. The Quran is considered by Muslims be the sacred word of God, so to see torn pages of the sacred text splattered with blood in a video game inevitably caused outrage within the Call Of Duty and Muslim communities.
“Brothers, I see pages of the Qur’an on the ground in the zombie map,” BKTO0R wrote on Twitter. “I think that it should be removed as soon as possible.”
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“Could we please just not put text from the Quran on the ground or on places where people can walk on it,” video game developer Rami Ismail added. “Even if you think religion is nonsense, there's just no reason to be disrespectful towards two billion people's culture & beliefs in a video game for a throwaway asset.”
Activision quickly responded to the backlash. The offending pages are now blank, and the publisher has apologised, and promised to look into exactly how and why the Quran was used in the game in such a way in the first place.
“Call of Duty is made for everyone,” a statement issued by the company reads. “There was insensitive content to the Muslim community mistakenly included last week, and has since been removed from the game. It should never have appeared as it did in-game. We deeply apologize. We are taking immediate steps internally to address the situation to prevent such occurrences in the future.”
Featured Image Credit: ActivisionTopics: Call Of Duty, Activision