Activision Blizzard is no stranger to controversy. For example, Blizzard’s culture of sexual harassment and the length the company’s gone through to cover it up certainly comes to mind.
More recently, Call of Duty: Vanguard received some unwanted attention over depictions of the Quran. Activision apologized for and removed several pages of the Quran scattered around the floor of an in-game environment. The change came after multiple complaints from Muslim Call of Duty players and others.
The Quran is the main religious text of Islam, and its inclusion in media frequently attracts particular scrutiny. Islamic tradition forbids letting a copy of the Quran touch the floor. As such, one might question the decision to include several blood-spattered pages scattered around the floor of Call of Duty: Vanguard's Zombies map, Der Anfang.
A Muslim Call of Duty player who goes by BKTO0R noticed the detail. BKTO0R tagged Call of Duty: Vanguard in a tweet criticizing the inclusion of the Muslim holy book. Translated from Arabic, his tweet reads, “Brothers, I see pages of the Quran on the ground in the Zombies map. I see that it should be removed as soon as possible if it is correct.” Other Twitter issuers rallied to BKTO0R’s call, with some going as far as accusing the game of being deliberately offensive.
Activision issued an official apology on Call of Duty’s middle eastern Twitter account. Again, translated from Arabic, Activision said, “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.” Activision’s explanation does make significantly more sense than deliberate Islamophobia. Muslims make up about a quarterof the world’s population after all, and Activision Blizzard is a major corporation. So, it has a pretty big economic motivation to avoid this kind of controversy.
Still, it’s a bizarre mistake for such a large company to make. Whether or not someone thinks depictions of the Quran are a big deal, it’s a striking image to see any religious text scattered on a bloody floor. People will read into that no matter what, so it’s not something to be done thoughtlessly. Of course, it’s possible that the developers of Call of Duty: Vanguard’s Zombies mode simply chose a random book in Arabic script, not realizing it was the Quran, but it’s strange that no one bothered to check from where they were pulling the pages.
Activision, in particular, should have known better. Another Twitter user pointed out that this is not the first time the publisher faced this sort of criticism. Specifically, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 invited controversy by including the words, “Allah is beautiful, and he loves beauty,” written in Arabic on two picture frames hung in a bathroom. The backlash led to the developer temporarily removing the map while it removed the text. Again, one could argue it’s not as big a deal as some people made it out to be. However, one would think that Activision would have at least learned to be more careful.
Call of Duty: Vanguard is available on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
