Russia Recalls Modern Warfare 2

eldavojohn writes "You may recall much ado over some questionable footage in the latest Call of Duty game. Well, that footage has led to a recall of Modern Warfare 2 in Russia. Seems the Russian government was none too happy about the portrayal of Russia in the game and decided to yank it from stores. Infinity Ward has responded with a patch that removes the 'No Russian' mission (the content in question) from the storyline. Before you overly criticize the Russian government, there may be some truth to the claim that the game's story line overly demonizes Russians as just terrorists as the Russian site GotPS3.ru alleges. Is cultural sensitivity becoming an overly played card in the gaming world? Not too long ago, Wolfenstein was recalled in Germany for containing Nazi symbols."

Comments

Censorship is BAD, m'kay?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Before you overly criticize the Russian government, there may be some truth to the claim that the game's story line overly demonizes Russians

Oh, I guess that makes it okay, then. The Russian government has every right to make up your mind for you.

Re:Censorship is BAD, m'kay?

[Dmala]

Just turn it around. Try to even think about the uproar if some game developer released a game where Americans are associated with terrorism and the famous "No Russian" level would take part in lets say New York Airport, instead of Moscow.

Uproar *from the people* is fine. The problem here is that, as I understand it, the ban is coming from the Russian government. There is no way the US government could get a game banned over content that portrayed Americans negatively. Any attempt would rightly be overturned as unconstitutional.

Re:Censorship is BAD, m'kay?

[plague3106]

I wouldn't care, and would still buy the game.

Its just a fucking game.

CoD6: Vietnam

[number17]

When are the Vietnam missions coming out where a villiage gate opens and you have to pillage and rape all the civilians? That's right, nobody is stupid enough to do it for the same reason.

Not so fast..

[tjstork]

Oh boo hoo. Russia has a bad history, it should expect criticism

While we Americans were sitting on our rears eating bon-bons, more Russians died than in all of America's wars combined fighting Adolph Hitler. Love them or hate them, forced by circumstances or not, the Russians did more to save Western Europe from Nazism than anyone else.

Re:Not so fast..

[MightyMartian]

Of course, the Russians have to take a lot of responsibility for that, because right up until the morning of the Nazi invasion they were shipping steel to Nazi Germany. In fact, Operation Barbarossa was specifically delayed until after those final steel shipments. It's one of the great ironies of the War that a lot of equipment thrown into the invasion of Russia was made using Russian steel.

Beyond that, one of the chief reasons that Germany was initially so successful was because of Stalin's purges of the Army in the 1930s had eliminated a good deal of talent in the Red Army. While Hitler was content to overlook some of the opinions of his most important officers in the Navy, Army and Luftwaffe, Stalin's paranoia and megalomania drove him to wipe out a good portion of the very people that would have been key in organizing military defense.

So Russia was by no means innocent of its own woes, as Churchill reminded Stalin at times when Stalin would freak out about not enough armament shipments were getting through or when he felt the US and Britain weren't doing enough to relieve pressure in the Eastern Theater.

Re:Not so fast..

[Shakrai]

While we Americans were sitting on our rears eating bon-bons

Why shouldn't we have been sitting on our rears eating bon-bons? You think it's the job of the United States to intervene in foreign wars? We did that in WW1 and got nothing out of it -- our supposed Allies ignored Wilson's plan for a just and fair peace and imposed draconian terms on Germany that set the stage for WW2. Then they defaulted on their wartime debts to the US. With that bit of history in mind perhaps it's easier to understand why the US had a strong isolationist sentiment in the 30s?

Love them or hate them, forced by circumstances or not, the Russians did more to save Western Europe from Nazism than anyone else.

The Russians made their own bed when they cut a deal with Hitler to slice up Eastern Europe. Had they joined forces with the Allies in 1939 it's probable that Germany would have been crushed and the Great Patriotic War would never have happened. The French had long sought an alliance with the Soviet Union to counter the threat of Germany but Stalin wasn't interested. He wanted the European powers to beat the stuffing out of each other to strengthen his own position. He even supplied Germany with the raw materials (ranging from grain to steel) required to keep her war machine running.

The West owes Russia no debt for her actions in WW2.

Re:Not so fast..

[Shakrai]

but we should always be grateful for how much blood the Russians shed fighting our common enemy (far, FAR more than we did).

You mean the common enemy that they cut a deal with and allowed to conquer Western Europe without so much as firing a shot? Heck, it's worse than that -- they invaded several innocent and neutral countries (Finland, the Baltic States) while Hitler was enjoying his free hand in the West.

If the Russians had allied with the Western Allies in 1939 Germany would have been crushed and the Great Patriotic War would never have happened. Let's try not to forget that.....

Have they played the mission?

[cosm]

In 'No Russian', you play as an American CIA agent, and you, as an AMERICAN agent, lay round after round into the innocent populace, alongside the Russian antagonist. I think the even larger message Infinity Ward sends with this mission is the atrocious things the American government is willing to do for the sake of 'National Security'.

Does anyone else see the hilarity in this? Not to mention their foreshadowing of American soldiers torturing an informant via electrocution! Each side of the geopolitical spectrum gets demonized in their own right.

But hey, lets just hate on the game that shows the gritty reality of the world.

Re:Sad

[MightyMartian]

You'd get bitchy people, but an attempt to ban it would probably lead to the ACLU taking whatever level of government that tried it to court..

There is a difference between disliking something and having a system that actually allows you to outright ban it.

Thin skins are not the problem; terrorism is

[tetromino]

The problem Russia's Ministry of Internal Affairs had with the mission is not with how the Russian villain is portrayed (although that probably didn't help the game get a positive reception), but with the fact that the mission is about killing innocent Russian civilians. It does not matter whether the villain is Russian or French or American or Martian - killing civilians at an airport is, according, to a Ministry spokesman, "propaganda of terrorism" and hence illegal.

See http://www.gotps3.ru/article/call_of_duty_modern_warfare_2_zapretjat_v_rossii/ for more details.

Re:Waaaaahh

[sopssa]

Shouldn't the story here be about censorship rather than game content? Make a game that portrays Americans in a negative light and sell it here -- I doubt our Government will feel the need to prevent our people from buying it.

I really doubt there would NOT be any problems to release a game where you're an Iraqi fighting against the invading your country by American soldiers, trying to protect your country from the "bad". To give some extra perspective to the game, the American soldiers could be raping your families and completely destroying your country (interestingly that's not even made up story, as it's real). Or where you would be designing terrorist attacks against USA. Do you really think that would be allowed?

But there's no need to think what would happen. It would be banned for obscene material and the creators sent to jail, like in earlier case:

Extreme Associates and owners Robert Zicari, also known as Rob Black, 35, and his wife, Janet Romano, aka Lizzie Borden, 32, pleaded guilty in March to a felony charge of conspiracy to distribute obscene material through the mail and over the Internet and got over an year in jail time.

Re:Germans and Wolfenstein ....

[Anonymous Struct]

It's not like we don't have a culture of denial here in the US. We wiped out the American Indians pretty remorselessly. That's pretty close to genocide, but it doesn't get taught that way in our schools. Every nation tries to overlook the terrible things its done in the past. People and countries are pretty much all the same, wherever you go.

Re:Waaaaahh

[kevinNCSU]

I'm curious what America's response would be to their people being demonized. I'd love to see a game set in Iraq or Vietnam where America invades your country, kills your people and attempts to rest control of your homeland away from you.

You mean like a game where you play as a suspected American terrorist who murders hundreds of civilians in an airport of a superpower and then that superpower comes and fucks your country up? I played it this morning, it's called Modern Warfare 2, and we reacted to it by buying millions of copies. Any more questions?