Activision Is Cutting Real Itaewon Footage From 'Modern Warfare 4'

Call of Duty is the biggest shooter franchise on Earth, built by thousands of people and reviewed at every level before it ships. This week, Activision had to answer a question none of that process caught: how did real news footage from a real disaster — one that killed 159 people — end up inside the opening of Modern Warfare 4?

The game, released October 23, opens its campaign with a fictional North Korean invasion of South Korea, told partly through news-style montage. As Polygon reported, players examining that opening identified a brief clip — a matter of seconds — as actual news footage from the aftermath of the Itaewon crowd crush in Seoul on October 29, 2022, when a Halloween crowd surge in a narrow alley killed 159 people and injured 196. The game launched six days before the tragedy's fourth anniversary.

How it surfaced

South Korean broadcaster MBC first exposed the footage, as Video Games Chronicle reported. On October 28, the October 29 Itaewon Disaster Bereaved Families Association and the Citizens' Countermeasure Meeting for the Itaewon Disaster issued a joint statement calling the use of real disaster material in an entertainment product inappropriate and demanding its removal. The Korea Game Users Association added its own demand: an explanation, an apology, and the footage replaced.

Activision's first position was explanation without removal — the game is a work of fiction built for realistic immersion, it had used real news footage to establish its fictional narrative, and it had never intended to reference or trivialize the Itaewon disaster or any other real-world tragedy. Within days, that position changed.

The apology, and the date

On October 30, Activision apologized. In a statement carried by South Korean media and reported by VGC, the publisher said: "We offer our deepest condolences and sincere apologies to the bereaved families, victims and everyone who has been deeply hurt or distressed by this incident." It repeated that the use of real news footage was never meant to evoke the disaster — and this time it attached a remedy: the footage "will be completely removed through a game update scheduled for distribution on November 12." The patch removes it automatically for every player — a date TheGamer also confirmed from Activision's statement.

One part of the families' response deserves to be stated plainly, because they stated it plainly: the Bereaved Families Association welcomed the decision to remove the footage, but told the BBC it had not received a direct apology from the publisher. The apology, so far, has been made to cameras and newspapers. The families are still waiting for one made to them.

The question nobody has answered

Activision has not explained how the clip was selected, whether its origin was identified during development, or what changes internally because of this. That silence matters more than the patch. A three-second clip inside a flagship production passes asset sourcing, legal review, ratings review and final QA — or it bypasses them. Either way, the system that was supposed to ask "where did this come from?" did not ask it about the most sensitive footage in the building.

The footage stays in the game until November 12. Then, if Activision keeps its word, it is gone — and this story gets its checkable ending. We will check.