Activision Blizzard and Sledgehammer Games have ticked off players of the Islamic faith in this year’s Call of Duty’s Zombies mode.

The Quran is known as the Bible of Muslims, so they treat it as a holy document. There’s no problem with that, but there may be some criticism if you find a few pages of the book scattered here and there in one of the maps in Call of Duty: Vanguard’s Zombies mode. Those of Christian or Orthodox faith may not realize what is on the floor, and those who follow Islam may see this as disrespectful. Many have expressed their displeasure on Twitter, and the hashtag #No_Call_of_Duty has taken off on the ‘birdy social media site’.

Activision’s Middle East Twitter reacted to this in a statement, and you can read a translated version here. It says, “Call of Duty is made for everyone. 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.” (We would like to ask how it managed to get into the game? Is this some implicit religious discrimination within the company?)

After a quick correction, the Quran was indeed removed, but TheGamer pointed out that there are nearly two billion Muslims on Earth; almost a quarter of our population (and outside the Middle East, Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, and Nigeria, for example, have the most prominent communities). Perhaps, for this reason, it could be called inconsiderate that Activision Blizzard apologized not on a primary account but a Middle Eastern one.

And it’s not the first time: when a bathroom mural in the Favela map of 2009’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 featured scriptures from a book, a similar outcry ensued. History does seem to be repeating itself…

Source: WCCFTech

مقطع فديو عشان محد يقول فبركة #No_Call_of_Duty pic.twitter.com/0GSRXDwB3Q

— ᴮᴷᵀᴼᴼᴿ (@BKTO0R) November 10, 2021