Call of Duty: Vanguard, the latest game in the Call of Duty series, was criticized by Muslim gamers for displaying sheets of the Koran scattered on one of its maps. Activision as the publisher of Call of Duty: Vanguard immediately apologized on social media.
Some gamers uploaded screenshots of the game Call of Duty: Vanguard on social media which showed sheets of the Koran scattered on the floor and splashed with blood. The sheet of the Koran was found in one of the locations on the Zombies map.
The screenshot above was taken during the Der Anfang campaign, where players have to kill an army of zombies from different countries. The location shown is set against the backdrop of Stalingrad during World War II.
Seeing content deemed insensitive and insulting to Islam, Muslim gamers and game developers immediately criticized Call of Duty: Vanguard on social media and even threatened a boycott.
Some of them were furious to see sheets of the Koran scattered on the floor, where the characters in the game could step on the pages of the holy book.
Activision as the publisher of Call of Duty: Vanguard immediately apologized via the Call of Duty Middle East Twitter account. They say the content has now been removed from the game.
"Call of Duty is made for everyone. There was insensitive content against the Muslim community that was wrongly entered last week, and has now been removed from the game," Activision wrote in its official statement, as quoted from Kotaku, Friday (12/11/2021) .
"It should never have appeared in the game. We apologize profusely. We immediately took internal steps to address the situation to prevent such incidents in the future."
Zombie Mode in Call of Duty: Vanguard was developed by Treyarch. Meanwhile the standard multiplayer campaign and mode are handled by Sledgehammer Games.
This is not the first time Call of Duty has been criticized for including content deemed insulting to Islam. In the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 series, there are paintings containing quotes from the Prophet Muhammad.
The painting hangs in the bathroom on the Favela multiplayer map. Activision later apologized and removed the map from the game
