Activision to pull real Itaewon crush footage from Modern Warfare 4

Activision has confirmed it will cut real news footage of the 2022 Itaewon crowd crush from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 after criticism from South Korean groups. Rock Paper Shotgun, citing the BBC, reports that an update on November 12 will make the change.

The crush happened on October 29, 2022, during Halloween festivities in Seoul’s Itaewon district. GamesRadar+ puts the toll at 160 dead and 196 injured, while Rock Paper Shotgun says between 150 and 160 people died.

The sources also differ on where the footage appears. GamesRadar+ says it is part of a fictional news broadcast that plays at the end of the first mission, and that it shows people performing CPR, body bags lining a street and someone on a stretcher. Rock Paper Shotgun places it in the opening cinematic and, citing SBS News in Korea, describes about three seconds of broadcast video of emergency workers giving CPR. Rock Paper Shotgun notes that the SBS report it relied on was machine-translated into English and may contain errors.

The bereaved families said they were “appalled” and called the use of the event in an entertainment product “highly inappropriate and senseless”, according to a statement relayed by the BBC. They urged the developer to act without delay.

Activision told the BBC the footage was used “to establish the game’s fictional narrative” and was “not intended to reference or trivialise the Itaewon disaster or any other real-world tragedy in any way, shape or form.” It offered condolences to the victims and their families. The 10.29 Itaewon Disaster Bereaved Families Association welcomed the decision to remove the footage but said the publisher had not contacted it with a direct apology.

Why it matters

The game’s story has North Korea attacking South Korea, according to Rock Paper Shotgun, which puts a real South Korean tragedy close to the setting of the fiction. The complaint is about real footage of a disaster, not a fictional recreation of one.

This is not the first time the series has drawn criticism over real events. GamesRadar+ notes that Infinity Ward’s 2019 Modern Warfare reboot was accused of rewriting history by presenting the 1991 attacks on the Highway of Death between Kuwait and Iraq as a Russian action.

What we don’t know yet

Neither source says what will replace the footage or whether the change applies on every platform. It is also unclear whether Activision will issue a direct apology to the families.