Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 to Remove Itaewon Footage

Activision has said it will fully remove real news footage of the Itaewon disaster from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4. The deletion will arrive with a game update scheduled for November 12, according to a statement from the publisher.

The company said it never intended to evoke the Itaewon tragedy or any other tragic event, nor to make light of the pain involved, when it used real news broadcast footage in the game. It added that it offered its deepest condolences and a bow-headed apology to the bereaved families, the victims and everyone affected by the controversy.

What the footage showed

Modern Warfare 4 launched worldwide on October 23. One of its cinematic sequences includes roughly three seconds of broadcast archive material from just after the Itaewon crowd crush, showing paramedics performing CPR on a collapsed civilian. The scene was used while the game depicts civilian casualties caused by war.

Once the footage came to light, it drew strong criticism in South Korea. On October 28, the Council of Families of the October 29 Itaewon Disaster Victims and a civic coalition issued a joint statement. They called it "highly inappropriate and senseless" to use the incident as material for a game made for entertainment, and demanded that the scene be deleted.

What comes next

The patch on November 12 is meant to remove the material entirely, rather than replace or edit it, according to Activision's wording. Until then, the footage remains in the version players currently have. The company did not provide further details on how the footage ended up in the cinematic or on any wider review of the game's content.

The case shows the risk of mixing real news footage into fiction, especially for a title released simultaneously in many markets where a single clip can carry very different meaning for local audiences.