With EverQuest’s expansion, LittleBigPlanet and Rock Band 2 for the PS3 all launching on the same day, deciding what game to PLAY would just be tearing me apart.
Thankfully, LittleBigPlanet has moved its launch date out a bit so as to make my life somewhat less stressful. Media Molecule, I didn’t know you cared.
Well, actually, it’s because one of the songs in the soundtrack contains phrases from the Qu’ran, so they are recalling every copy of the game so they can replace it, as they would rather not take any risk of offending Muslims.
Now, if it had been offensive to Christians, they’d likely have used it as a selling point, and free publicity.
I don’t mention religion much, this not being a religion blog, but I’m a Christian, and I’m a gamer, and I don’t get offended when people bash Christianity. It can take it. And I think Muslim gamers are not much different. The Qu’ran can survive having some of its words used in a song. Sony is just being cowardly. The point is not to take religion away from the world, but to make it more a part of the world.
If *I* were a Muslim, I’d be offended that Sony would fear the Qu’ran so much that it would recall, at great expense, all the copies of a game to take a harmless mention of a holy book out.
8 thoughts on “Sony cravenly succumbs to its fear of religious expression.”
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Amen. I’m glad you said this, because it’s been bugging me all day. I agree with you 100%.
It might, perhaps, be less to do with offending Muslims and more to do with offending the “won’t somebody think of the children?” crazy people who will be worried about children being exposed to the Qu’ran and possibly growing up to be terrorists.
I hope not, but the cynical side of me (who is rapidly taking over the happy, naive side of me) is highly suspicious. Either way I’ve been craving this game for ages and it’s disappointing to have it pushed back over something so trivial.
Well, apparently a Muslim beta tester objected to mixing music and scripture. The singer is, btw, a devout Muslim and apparently disagrees.
Sony apparently caved in after that single post.
I don’t think Sony fears the Qu’ran as much as they do the extremists who detonate themselves in public places for stuff like this.
And it apparently was a Muslim who found it offensive.
http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:BuPMgf6T4UIJ:community.eu.playstation.com/playstationeu/board/message%3Fboard.id%3D611%26message.id%3D8388+%22tapha+Niang%22+quran&hl=da&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=dk
That certainly unfairly paints all Muslims as fanatical terrorists. And it is a large, multinational company being ruled by fear. Not even a real fear. A fake fear. Because the fear is that any Muslim is ready to detonate themselves for any excuse.
They aren’t any different from anyone else. There’s plenty of kooks, murderous ones, in any society.
The Sphinx said it best: If you don’t master your fear, then fear will be your master.
I am getting real tired of people trying to impose their will on other people because of imaginary friends…
Sony may be being overly cautious after all the bad publicity they got over using Manchester cathedral in a firts-person-shooter. I believe there were calls to ban that game at the time.
Case in point. A giant publicity win for them. I don’t even play FPS games and I couldn’t even have told you the name of the game that came from if it hadn’t been for all the free publicity, but because of it, I remember that it came from Resistance: the Fall of Man. Man-chester Cathedral 😛
I think I would have liked SCEE’s reaction better if they had swapped out the song for one with more Qu’ran in it; without mixing with music, if that’s the objectionable part. Don’t remove the sentiment; enlarge it. Put some Enigma in there for equal time for Christians and we’re good 🙂