A pesky few lyrics of the Quran have ruined the worldwide launch of Media Molecules LittleBigPlanet. Some fans petitioned MM and Sony to sort it out.
While a patch could easily nullify the track, Sony is concerned about gamers who don’t have access to PSN and so ordered the re-mastering of the LBP discs.
”As some of you may have noticed, LBP has been slightly delayed in some territories,” wrote technical director Alex Evans.
”At MM we were as shocked and dismayed by this as anyone - shellshocked and gutted. We can’t wait for you all to get playing and creating!”
The ‘offensive’ lyric ”slipped through the usual screening processes” and was discovered on the 16th.
”Obviously MM and Sony together took this very seriously. LBP should be enjoyable by all. So within 12 hours of hearing about this issue involving a lyric (in Somalian, I believe!), Media Molecule had prepared an automatic day 0 patch and had a new disk image ready,” he continued.
The delay, given the cause, has caught the attention of mainstream press. Early press versions of LBP are likely to sell like hotcakes at the international bake sale emporium - aka eBay.
”LittleBigPlanet will be remastered in order to remove a track from the game that contained two expressions found in the Qur’an,” wrote a Sony community manager.
”Whilst shorter expressions from the Qur’an are sometimes used in Nasheeds, we are aware that the mixing of musical instruments with recognisable extracts from the Qur’an is offensive to Muslims. Therefore, we have taken immediate action to rectify this. We will confirm a new launch date shortly.”
This is what happens when the world embraces an ideology; video games get delayed. Shame on you for expressing belief!
Source: Eurogamer
