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After 28 years of player complaints, the Ocarina of Time Water Temple is finally getting the fix its own creator says it needed. Ahead of the remake’s Nov. 5 launch on Nintendo Switch 2, series veteran Eiji Aonuma has confirmed that the dungeon has been reworked to cut down on the frustration that made it a byword for bad video game levels.

“Overdue homework” from the dungeon’s designer

The comments come from an “Ask the Developer” interview published on Nintendo’s website, and were picked up by Polygon and IGN. Asked whether the remake’s dungeons would change, Aonuma, who designed the originals, said with a laugh that he had “some overdue homework” and wanted to do something about the Water Temple he created decades ago. Because the area became so well known for its difficulty, he said, he had the team make adjustments.

Aonuma did not disown the original idea. He said he wanted to make simply being underwater feel enjoyable at a time when few 3D games let players dive at all. A freediving enthusiast, he said he is fascinated by how sound and space feel different beneath the surface, and he hoped players could sense that too. The execution, he conceded, got in the way: the dungeon’s complex structure and constant item toggling forced players to open the menu again and again, making it hard to keep track of where they were and which way they faced.

What changed in the Water Temple

According to the developers, the fixes target those specific pain points rather than gutting the dungeon.

• Easier item toggling. Game director HokWai Ng said swapping gear is now “much easier,” with quick item swaps on the d-pad instead of trips through the pause menu. IGN adds that Link can take off his Iron Boots instantly, without stopping to open the equipment screen.
• See-through walls. Some walls that made it easy to lose your bearings have become lattice-style structures. Players can see the rooms beyond them and get a better feel for the temple’s overall shape.
• Guidance built into the layout. Ng said objects are now placed so players intuitively work out which way to go, and some areas differ slightly from the original. IGN also noted from gameplay footage that the wall lights from the 3DS version, which point toward water-level-shifting spots, are back.

Importantly, Ng said the team kept the original dungeon mechanisms and aimed to improve “playability.” The approach, as IGN framed it, is less about making the puzzles easier than about giving players enough information so they aren’t simply lost.

Why the Ocarina of Time Water Temple matters so much

Few game levels carry as much baggage. The 1998 Nintendo 64 original is widely considered one of the best games ever made, yet the Ocarina of Time Water Temple is the part many fans remember with a groan. Its combination of slow underwater movement, confusing layouts and repeated boot swapping turned navigation into a chore. IGN’s writer recalled taking longer to figure it out than almost any other part of the game, while Polygon’s bluntly called it the one caveat to the game’s reputation.

That makes Nintendo’s public acknowledgment notable. Rather than ignoring a long-running joke, the team is treating it as a design problem worth solving, and the person responsible for the original is the one saying so.

A conversation starter across generations

The interview ends on a lighter note. The developers said they hope the remake gets players of different ages talking about their memories of the game. Ng joked that a parent might say, “Your Dad got stuck in the Water Temple plenty of times.” Aonuma replied that kids playing the new version might respond, “Come on, it’s not that hard,” leaving poor old Dad deflated.

Early hands-on previews, according to Polygon, have been quite positive. Whether the reworked Ocarina of Time Water Temple fully redeems its reputation will be clear soon enough, when the remake arrives on Nov. 5, exclusively on Switch 2.

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After eight years of near silence, Bethesda has finally put a name to its most anticipated role-playing game: The Elder Scrolls 6 Sentinel is now official. Franchise director Todd Howard revealed the subtitle and logo in a video message for Bethesda’s 40th anniversary. It is a milestone for fans, but the news comes without a release date, a trailer or any in-game footage.

What Bethesda Actually Showed

The reveal was brief. According to coverage from Engadget and Polygon, the teaser opens on a scroll buried beneath a sand dune, and the title rises out of the sand. A line of in-universe text follows the logo: “The scroll offered only a shimmer, a veil thinly lifted to my eyes. A future lost. A victory undone. Sands of time scattered by fate.” It is attributed to Yazar, a Moth Priest serving High Queen Iradne of Hammerfell, in the year 4E 206.

That date matters. As Polygon notes, 206 of the Fourth Era would place the game about five years after the events of Skyrim. The imagery also fits the setting. In series lore, Sentinel is a major city in Hammerfell, a province on the continent of Tamriel. Variety places it west of Cyrodiil, the setting of Oblivion, and southwest of Skyrim’s snowy north.

Why the Name Was Hardly a Surprise

Fans had been guessing “Sentinel” for months, and the video confirmed them. Engadget points to an August post by Xbox CEO Asha Sharma, who described a live playthrough of “The Elder Scrolls VI” with the subtitle hidden behind asterisks. The number of asterisks matched the letter count of “Sentinel.” Her post praised the game’s “scale and grandeur” and said the story was “even greater.”

Polygon adds some context about that visit. It happened while Bethesda workers and union members were protesting layoffs and studio closures at Xbox. The sources do not connect the reveal itself to that dispute, but it is part of the backdrop to the studio’s biggest project.

What the Setting and Rumors Suggest

Taken together, the sources point to a desert-heavy game set in Hammerfell. Engadget and Polygon both say the teaser seems to hint that the story could explore the origins of the Elder Scrolls themselves. These are the mysterious artifacts that hold records of the past or prophecies of the future, and they have mostly worked as plot devices across the series. Polygon stresses that this story angle is still a rumor, not something Bethesda has confirmed.

How Long Is the Wait?

The timeline is the sobering part. The game was first announced at E3 2018 and entered active production in 2023, after Starfield launched, according to Variety. Howard said in 2021 that he expected the game to arrive 15 to 17 years after Skyrim. Skyrim turns 15 this month, so that window is already open and could run to 2028.

Engadget reports that Bethesda says it will “be some time” before more information arrives. It also cites Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, who says the game is more than two years away. Polygon’s line about hoping not to celebrate Skyrim‘s 20th anniversary first captures the mood among fans.

For now, The Elder Scrolls 6 Sentinel is a title, a logo and a sand-covered scroll. That is more than fans had a week ago. Skyrim, still Bethesda’s most played game according to Variety, will have to keep players occupied in the meantime.

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The Ocarina of Time remake was supposed to get a new way to cross Hyrule quickly, and the person who asked for it was the one who later pulled it. In Nintendo’s latest Ask the Developer interview, longtime Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma said warp points were built, tested and then deleted ahead of the Switch 2 game’s November 5 release.

Why Aonuma wanted warp points in the first place

Aonuma’s reasoning was practical. He pointed to Breath of the Wild, which has many warp points across its huge map, and contrasted it with the 1998 original. There, he said, many players simply spammed the forward roll across Hyrule Field whenever they were in a hurry. He wanted the remake to address that, so he asked the team to add shortcuts that never existed in the first game.

What went wrong when the team playtested them

According to Aonuma, the problem showed up once people actually played with the warp points. The team realised they were “missing out on the moments of discovery” that come from stopping along the way and wondering what something is. He said the experience reminded him how central those moments are to the structure of Ocarina of Time. Even though the idea was his, it “just wasn’t working” for him, so he had the team take every warp point back out.

The decision makes more sense given how the original is built. As Kotaku points out, the 1998 game already has a limited form of fast travel: songs that warp Link to five major dungeons and the Temple of Time. Those are tied into progression, and one is needed to reach its dungeon at all. Adding warps to hubs such as Kokiri Forest, Lon Lon Ranch or Zora’s Domain would have made Hyrule Field largely optional, and it is the space that links those places together.

A remake shaped by developers new to the game

The anecdote fits a wider philosophy Aonuma described for the project. He said some younger team members may never have played the original 28 years ago, and that remaking it could “trigger new insights that they can carry forward into future development.” Rather than dictating how the game should look and play, he said he let the developers make the changes they felt were necessary, though he admitted to delivering “my fair share of lectures” along the way.

That freedom extends to presentation. Art director Aya Shida said the team talked early on about a “puppet-show feel” and the “analog feel of practical effects films.” Neither reproduces reality exactly, she said, yet both convince you the characters exist in their fantasy worlds. The look has proved divisive, but it was a deliberate choice.

Not every old friction point survived. Eurogamer notes that the infamous tutorial owl seems to be less chatty this time. The Ocarina of Time remake appears to be smoothing out annoyances while keeping the exploration that Aonuma sees as the game’s backbone.

The takeaway is a rare bit of restraint. Modern open-world design often treats fast travel as expected, but Nintendo tested it, disliked the result and cut it. A second part of the interview is due the day after the first, and the game arrives on Switch 2 on November 5.

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A new Zelda Google Easter egg is live, and it turns the world’s biggest search engine into a time machine. With Nintendo’s remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time arriving on Switch 2 this Thursday, November 5, Google is celebrating by restoring the look of search as it was in 1998, the year the original game debuted on the Nintendo 64.

How to trigger the Zelda Google Easter egg

Getting it to work is simple. Search for “Zelda,” “Ocarina of Time,” or even “tloz,” and a glowing Master Sword hovers in the bottom-right corner of the results page. Click it and Link lets out a “Hya!”, according to Polygon. IGN describes the sword being shoved into its pedestal as the screen warps, as if pulling you back through time. Polygon adds that the Triforce briefly takes over most of the screen before the page transforms. Clicking the sword again returns you to the modern version of Google.

What 1998 Google looks like

The throwback page uses the old Google logo, complete with its exclamation mark, and lists results as plain blue text links. Kotaku notes there are no AI summaries, shopping links or ads. IGN points out that the retro page even includes the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button, which sends you straight to a result.

It is a polished gag, and it fits a long tradition. Polygon notes that Google has paid tribute to games before, including an interactive Super Mario question-mark block in 2015, a nod to Wordle in 2022, a playable Breakout, and a Pokédex mini-game in which players search for and catch the 151 original Pokémon. That last one is still active.

A nostalgic joke with a pointed subtext

Two of the outlets could not resist reading the Zelda Google Easter egg as a comment on where search has gone. Polygon’s Patricia Hernandez called it a “depressing reminder” of how much the product has changed, citing AI answers that she says often fail to link their sources. Kotaku’s Ash Parrish went further, describing the 1998 page as a reminder of a time when finding things on the web was easier and less cluttered.

Kotaku also tied the timing to Google’s finances. It reported that Google lost $475 billion in market value last week, its worst day on the stock market ever, with analysts pointing to missed ad revenue targets. According to that report, the company’s own AI search product was eating into that ad revenue. That is Kotaku’s account of the situation, and the outlet joked that Google should keep the Easter egg up a little longer. The sources do not say whether the company has any plans to do so.

The remake it celebrates

The remake is a Switch 2 exclusive. IGN reports that Nintendo producer Eiji Aonuma recently said some younger members of the development team had never played the original, and that he considered this beneficial for the remake. Kotaku, meanwhile, reports that the developers experimented with extra fast-travel points before dropping them.

For now, the Zelda Google Easter egg is a free, harmless way to feel 1998 again before the game arrives. Whether you read it as a loving tribute or a quiet jab at modern search, it takes about two seconds to try.

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The F-Stop leak has turned one of Valve’s best-known lost projects into something people can actually play. Nearly two decades after the company shelved its camera-based Portal prequel, leakers and members of the Valve Cut Content community have assembled a version that is reportedly almost complete.

Both The Verge and Kotaku reported the news on November 1, 2026. Their accounts agree on the main points, though they differ slightly on some details.

What F-Stop was supposed to be

F-Stop came out of a short, unusual stretch at Valve in 2007. Over about three months, which Gabe Newell would later call the Directed Design Experiments, the studio split into five teams. Each built a rough prototype of a new idea, and F-Stop was the fifth.

It was conceived as a prequel to Portal. Instead of a portal gun, players used an experimental Aperture Science camera. Photographing an object captured it, and the resulting Polaroid-style picture could be used to place that object somewhere else. The Verge likens the idea to the more recent puzzle game Viewfinder. Kotaku describes the core of the game as manipulating perspective to solve puzzles.

Newell was reportedly very taken with the concept, but playtesters were less impressed, and the project was dropped. Pieces of it survived. Some dialogue, characters and mechanics were reworked into Portal 2.

How three leaks became one playable game

The F-Stop leak is not a single event. It is the result of three separate leaks being stitched together.

The first was a huge dump of Steam depot data in late August, which Kotaku says was dubbed “Steam2.” The Verge puts its size at 12 terabytes and Kotaku at roughly 13, so the exact figure is unclear. It reportedly covered nearly every Steam depot from 2003 to 2013, and, surprisingly, most of F-Stop’s assets. But it lacked two key ingredients: the game’s source code and its mapsrc data, which is Valve’s name for the folder holding map source files.

Those final pieces reportedly appeared this week on the Valve Cut Content Discord server. Kotaku says they arrived over roughly 48 hours. It also reports, citing the server’s moderators, that the person behind the map data first asked for $1,000 but ended up releasing it for free. Kotaku adds that the Valve Cut Content team verified the map files as authentic before the community combined everything into a working build.

How complete is it?

According to Kotaku, players say a few assets and dialogue lines are missing but that the game is essentially 99 percent complete. That figure comes from player reports, not an official assessment, and Valve has not commented in either source.

It is also short. The Verge notes that videos of the full campaign all run under an hour, which fits a prototype made in a three-month window. Anyone expecting a full-length Portal game should adjust their hopes. What the build offers is a look at an unreleased experiment and how an idea was tested before being folded into a better-known sequel.

Why the F-Stop leak matters

For fans of Valve’s history, the significance is that F-Stop is no longer lost media. Until now it was known mostly from developer anecdotes, the Half-Life wiki and scraps of surviving material. People can now see how the camera mechanic worked in practice and judge for themselves why playtesters were lukewarm.

It also shows how much of Valve’s past has come to light this year. The August Steam2 dump supplied the raw material, and community preservation groups did the work of verifying and assembling it. Whether Valve responds is unknown, since neither report includes any statement from the company. For now, the F-Stop leak means a game that was 0 percent available a week ago can be played from start to finish.

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The number of new itch.io game pages being created each day has doubled in roughly two months, and the platform says the audience has not grown to match. The figures point to a flood of generative AI projects, a problem many developers had already noticed on Steam.

Itch.io shared the data in a Bluesky post late on October 31. Its graph showed about 3,000 new pages created per day in August 2026. By October 30, the figure was above 6,000. In replies, the platform indicated that AI-made projects account for the majority of the new pages, according to Polygon’s reading of the thread. PC Gamer’s coverage similarly framed AI-generated “slop” as the likely cause, though itch.io’s public statements are brief, and the data shows volume rather than a detailed breakdown of who is uploading what.

More itch.io game pages, but not more players

The most telling detail may be what did not change. Itch.io confirmed in another reply that downloads and purchases have not doubled since August. No graph accompanied that statement, so the exact trend is unclear. But the implication is plain: the supply of games is growing much faster than the number of people playing or buying them.

That matters because itch.io works differently from a curated storefront. It is open to almost anyone, which has made it a home for student projects, game jam entries and experimental work. Many better-known indie developers also use it, and games there are often given away in charity bundles. The openness that makes it valuable also makes it easy to flood.

What it means for indie developers

For developers who hand-craft their games, a larger pile of new releases without a larger audience means a smaller share of attention for each one. Discovery is already a major challenge for small teams, and the new numbers suggest it is getting harder.

Itch.io does ask developers to disclose when they have used AI, but that is a labeling measure rather than a restriction. Whether disclosure is enough to keep AI-generated pages from crowding out other work is the open question the numbers raise.

A wider storefront problem

Itch.io is not alone. Polygon notes that Steam is similarly crowded, and that Steam Next Fest demos have been drowned out, or even copied, by AI-made competitors. One example it cites is the team behind Drunken Goddess Reflux, which canceled its Next Fest demo over concerns about AI clones.

Neither platform has announced new restrictions in response to the latest figures, at least in the material reviewed here. Unless that changes, the pattern in the data is likely to continue: itch.io game pages multiplying quickly, while the players who might discover them stay roughly where they were.

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The Pikmin 4 Switch 2 Edition has a release date: 12 November, with a demo arriving on the Nintendo eShop the day before. The date came during a surprise Pikmin Day Direct, according to Eurogamer’s report, and the package adds a timed new mode called Dandori Academy.

One caveat first. The source material available for this piece covers the Direct announcements, not a full Nintendo Treehouse play session. It does not describe what a Treehouse stream showed beyond the Dandori Academy exam featured in the Direct, so this article sticks to what has been confirmed.

What the Pikmin 4 Switch 2 Edition adds

The headline addition is Dandori Academy, a timed exam mode. The Direct showcased one exam, Gargantuan Garden, in which players have to gather gold nuggets before the clock runs out. That fits the series’ long-running emphasis on “dandori”, the Japanese term for planning and organising work efficiently, though the source does not spell out how the mode is structured beyond that single example.

The upgraded version also lets players give voice commands to Oatchi, the dog companion introduced in the original game. The source does not say how many commands are supported or what they do.

Demo and upgrade options

A demo is due on the eShop on 2 November. Progress made in it will carry over to the full game if you buy it, so time spent trying the game is not wasted.

Owners of the original Switch release, which launched in July 2023, are not being asked to rebuy the game. An upgrade pack will be available through the eShop, though the source does not give a price. The new edition is the route to Dandori Academy and the voice commands.

A Direct without new games

Nintendo had said beforehand that the broadcast would contain no new game announcements, and it kept to that. Instead, Shigeru Miyamoto introduced Japanese actor Fuka Koshiba as a new ambassador for the series. Nintendo also confirmed that 1 November is now officially Pikmin Day.

The release lands in a busy month for Nintendo. Eurogamer notes that the Pikmin 4 Switch 2 Edition is one of two big releases in November, alongside a remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on 5 November.

What we still don’t know

Several practical details are missing from the available reporting. These include the upgrade pack’s price, the full list of Dandori Academy exams, any graphical or performance changes on Switch 2, and how the demo is structured. Anyone wanting answers before 12 November has a free option: the demo arrives on 2 November, and its progress will carry over to the full game.

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Call of Duty’s long-awaited return to Nintendo hardware comes with a catch for competitive players: Switch 2 input lag in Modern Warfare 4 is substantially higher than on PlayStation 5. Digital Foundry’s technical analysis puts the gap in hard numbers, and the portable results are the most striking.

The numbers behind the Switch 2 input lag

In multiplayer, Digital Foundry measured 81ms of latency with the console docked and an average of 100ms in handheld mode. The PS5 managed around 49ms. Both consoles were tested with wireless controllers, a Switch 2 Pro Controller and a DualSense. Portable mode was also inconsistent, ranging from 83ms at best to 125ms at worst.

So handheld play has roughly double the delay of PS5, while docked play adds about two-thirds more. Digital Foundry said responsiveness “simply isn’t as good as on other consoles” and called the portable lag “actually deleterious to performance.” IGN’s coverage framed this as a “competitive disadvantage” for Nintendo players, noting that no amount of trigger-finger speed can make up for a console that takes longer to register the input.

Why it matters more in multiplayer

Call of Duty multiplayer has long built its reputation on a steady 60fps, and the series’ fans tend to be sensitive to anything that tilts the playing field. Debate over PC players’ advantages in crossplay has followed the franchise for years. On that front, Switch 2 mostly holds up: it hits 60fps most of the time, though Digital Foundry noted dips in certain situations, such as looking through a riot shield’s transparent visor. Variable refresh rate support on compatible displays helps hide those drops.

Frame rate, however, isn’t the same as responsiveness. A game can look smooth and still feel sluggish, which is why the latency figures are the headline finding here.

A mostly positive port, with visual trade-offs

Digital Foundry was otherwise fairly upbeat about the port, which was developed by Digital Legends with support from Infinity Ward. The campaign is capped at 30fps and uses dynamic resolution. Docked with DLSS enabled, it targets 900p but can fall to 450p in demanding moments such as the Paris vehicle chase. In portable mode the target is 720p, dropping as low as 360p.

The two sources differ on how the docked campaign looks. Digital Foundry’s resolution figures are well below 4K, while IGN’s Simon Cardy described the campaign as running at 30fps at 4K while docked. He also called textures far less detailed than on other platforms, though he said it still felt “snappy” and was a worthwhile experience for Nintendo-only players. Readers should treat the exact resolution as unsettled between the two accounts.

How Call of Duty got here

The release is the first Call of Duty on a Nintendo console since Ghosts in 2013, a gap the sources describe as 13 or 14 years depending on how it’s counted. It exists because of Microsoft’s $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard. While seeking regulatory approval, Microsoft offered a 10-year commitment to bring the series to Nintendo platforms, a pledge then Xbox boss Phil Spencer made in December 2022.

For campaign players and casual fans, the port appears to deliver what Nintendo owners have waited over a decade for. For anyone who cares about ranked-style multiplayer, the Switch 2 input lag is the number to weigh, especially in handheld mode, where it is at its worst.

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A Persona 1 remake leak has set the RPG community buzzing after almost two minutes of apparent gameplay footage appeared online on 31 October. Atlus and Sega have announced no such project, and none of the outlets covering the story could verify the clip. Even so, the details inside it have convinced plenty of fans that they are looking at something real.

What the footage appears to show

The clip, which seems to carry the subtitle Be Your True Mind, runs a little under two minutes. According to reports, it shows polished menus and a short stretch of combat that closely resembles the look and feel of Persona 5 and Persona 3 Reload. It also includes a brief social link cutscene rendered in a noticeably different, almost graphic novel art style.

The file was reportedly uploaded to a file-sharing site under a Japanese filename that translates as “Megami Ibunroku Persona Remake”, a reference to the original game’s Japanese title. The accounts of how it spread differ. One report points to a post on the GamingLeaksAndRumours subreddit. Another says a YouTube channel named P1REMAKE shared it first, and that the channel’s account dates back to 2010 and has only a couple of other uploads, the last more than 14 years ago. The sources don’t settle which version is right, which is a good reason to be cautious about the clip’s origins.

Why fans think it’s authentic

Viewers have gone through the footage frame by frame and picked out several details they say lend it credibility:

• What looks like Unreal Engine debug text in the corner of the screen during battle. Atlus moved to Unreal Engine for Persona 3 Reload.
• A new remix of the Pandora theme from the original PlayStation game.
• The protagonist being labelled “Boy With Earring”, the name used for him in Persona 2: Eternal Punishment.
• A character summoning animation for Eriko that seems to match the one used for Yukiko in the upcoming Persona 4 Revival, which is due on 18 February 2027.

The length and detail of the video have also counted in its favour. Fake leaks tend to be shorter and less elaborate, and some fans say they can’t imagine someone going to this much trouble to fake one.

The oddities that cut the other way

Not everything fits neatly. Persona 2 protagonist Tatsuya appears in the footage, apparently standing in for what may be an unfinished character model. That could be a placeholder, which would suggest a game still early in development. It could just as easily be a sign that something is off. Some commenters have floated the idea that this is an internal pitch for remakes of both Persona 1 and Persona 2 rather than a slice of a single game.

Nobody can say when the footage was captured either. It could be recent, or it could be years old, and it might be a proof of concept rather than anything close to a finished build. IGN also noted that, in an era of AI-generated fakes, skepticism is the sensible default, even though fan opinion is leaning towards the clip being genuine. IGN said it has asked Sega for comment.

The context behind the rumour

The timing makes the leak plausible, which is not the same as confirming it. Atlus has been steadily revisiting its back catalogue: Persona 3 Reload arrived in 2024, and Persona 4 Revival is on the way. In August, series producer Kazuhisa Wada stopped short of confirming Persona 1 and Persona 2 remakes. Coverage of his comments varies in tone, from saying it’s something Atlus will “probably eventually do” to saying it is something “we have to do”. Either way, he left the door wide open without saying work had begun.

That leaves the Persona 1 remake leak in familiar territory. The evidence is intriguing, the sourcing is murky, and the only people who can settle it are at Atlus and Sega. Until they do, it is best treated as an unconfirmed rumour with a few unusually specific details.

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Activision has agreed to remove real news footage of the Itaewon crowd crush from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, promising that the material “will be completely removed” in a game update due on Nov. 12. The decision follows days of backlash from bereaved families and criticism from a senior South Korean government official.

The footage appears in the game’s opening cinematic, which uses short news-style clips to depict civilian casualties in a fictional North Korean invasion of South Korea. Players and reporters later found that some of the clips were archive broadcast material from the 2022 Halloween disaster in Seoul’s Itaewon district, rather than staged scenes created for the game.

What the Itaewon crowd crush footage showed

The crowd crush happened on Oct. 29, 2022, when thousands of people packed into the neighbourhood’s narrow streets and alleys during Halloween celebrations. Polygon puts the death toll at 159, while Eurogamer says around 160 people died. Either way, it was one of South Korea’s deadliest peacetime disasters in recent memory.

According to Polygon, the material in the game reportedly included victims being carried away on stretchers, body bags lying in the street and people attempting CPR. Placing that kind of imagery inside a military shooter’s introduction, as scene-setting for a fictional war, is what drew the fiercest objections.

Activision’s apology, and who has heard it

Activision’s response has come in pieces. In a Korean-language statement reported by Inven Global, the publisher said it bowed its heads “in deep sympathy and apology to the bereaved families and victims.” Separately, a statement given to South Korean broadcaster MBC and reported by The Korea Herald offered “deepest condolences and sincere apologies” to families and anyone distressed by the incident.

The company has maintained that the game is “a work of fiction created to provide realistic immersion” and that it never meant to evoke or trivialise the tragedy. Its earlier statement to Eurogamer said the cinematic “utilises some real world news coverage to establish the game’s fictional narrative.” That is an acknowledgement that real broadcast material was used, paired with a denial of intent to reference Itaewon specifically.

The apology has not fully landed with everyone. The 10.29 Itaewon Disaster Bereaved Families Association welcomed the removal but told the BBC it had not received a direct apology from Activision, according to Polygon. Eurogamer notes that the families’ association and the Citizens Countermeasure Meeting had both called for the footage to be taken out.

Government pressure adds weight

The dispute also moved into politics. Interior and Safety Minister Yun Ho-jung described the footage’s inclusion as “secondary harm” and said, “I believe appropriate sanctions should be imposed.” He argued that using such a tragedy as material for entertainment or business “is something that should be refrained from as a matter of human ethics.”

Yun did not announce a specific penalty. He said it was up to the relevant agencies to decide “whether to impose punishment or block it to make general access difficult.” It is unclear from the reporting whether any formal action will follow now that Activision has committed to a fix.

A game already sitting on a sensitive subject

The timing compounds an awkward launch. Modern Warfare 4 arrived last week with a premise that is itself politically charged: a war between North and South Korea, two countries that remain technically at war because the 1953 armistice was never followed by a peace treaty. Polygon notes the game has drawn criticism for that depiction alone.

For now, the practical outcome is clear. The Itaewon crowd crush footage stays in the game until the Nov. 12 patch, and the remaining question is whether Activision’s statements to the press will be followed by direct contact with the families who asked for it to be removed.

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File photo: Itaewon, Seoul Halloween Crowd Crush on October 29th, 2022.jpg by 열린공감 TV, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.