Call of Duty: Vanguard Devs Apologized and Removed Islamophobic Content Following Backlash
Call of Duty: Vanguard is the latest addition to the globally popular franchise. Despite its positive renown, it also has a long history of putting Muslim-majority countries in a relatively negative light. Just recently, the game was under fire from a huge number of Muslim players after they discovered an in-game location that had pages of the Quran strewn all over the floor.
Call of Duty devs posted their apology on social media and told the gaming community that the offending content found in Call of Duty: Vanguard has already been removed from the game. “Call of Duty is made for everyone,” they wrote. “There was insensitive content to the Muslim community mistakenly included last week and has since been removed from the game.”
Call of Duty: Vanguard players were able to take screenshots of the Islamphobic content before it was taken down. The images were taken during the Der Anfang campaign which showed players shooting zombies of different nationalities.
Many Muslim members of the Call of Duty community were not pleased to see that the game’s environmental artists placed pages of the Quran haphazardly on a dirty floor where players could easily step on them or shoot at them. One of Call of Duty: Vanguard’s zombie maps showed pages from the holy book lying on the floor with the phrase “In the name of God, the most Gracious, the most Merciful” clearly visible.
“It should never have appeared as it did in-game,” the devs continued. “We deeply apologize.” In addition to removing the content, they promised that they are “taking immediate steps internally to address the situation to prevent such occurrences in the future.”
Muslim Call of Duty: Vanguard players were also open to accepting Activision’s apology. “It is good to see an apology for the absolutely necessary and needless inclusion of Quran texts that people can walk over,” said one player.
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