Activision apologized to the bereaved families of the Itaewon crowd crush victims and confirmed it will remove real footage of the 2022 tragedy from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4. A game update scheduled for November 12th will delete the footage completely, Activision said in a statement reported by Inven Global.
The game's opening cinematic used news clips to depict fictional civilian casualties during a North Korean invasion of South Korea. Those clips included archive footage from the Itaewon disaster, in which around 160 people died. The bereaved families' association and the Citizens Countermeasure Meeting had called for removal.
"We bow our heads in deep sympathy and apology to the bereaved families and victims who were deeply hurt by this incident, as well as to everyone we have caused concern," Activision said.
The publisher stated that Modern Warfare 4 "is a work of fiction created to provide realistic immersion" and that it "never intended to evoke or trivialise any tragic event, including the Itaewon crowd crush" by using real news broadcast footage.
South Korea's minister of the interior and safety Yun Ho-jung called the footage's inclusion "secondary harm" during a press briefing. "Using such a tragedy as material for a game, a form of entertainment or business, is something that should be refrained from as a matter of human ethics," Yun said. He stated it was up to relevant agencies to decide "whether to impose punishment or block it to make general access difficult".