Gaming
Activision apologizes and will remove Itaewon footage from Modern Warfare 4
Activision apologized for including footage from the 2022 Itaewon crowd crush and says it will remove it in a November 12 update.
Families of Itaewon crowd-crush victims criticized Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 for using real news footage of the disaster, and Activision has apologized and says it will remove the footage in a November 12 update. VGC reports both the apology and the removal plan.
The footage sits at the very start. Modern Warfare 4 opens on a fictional North Korean invasion of South Korea and uses actual news footage to establish the scenario. Here, that footage came from a real tragedy.
The Itaewon crowd crush killed 159 people. Families of the victims objected to seeing images from that night repurposed as set dressing for an invented war, and they called on Activision to take the footage out. In my view, using real disaster footage this way was a poor call.
In its statement, Activision said it never intended to evoke or trivialize the Itaewon crowd crush and apologized to bereaved families, victims and others it had caused concern.