LittleBigPlanet Recalled By Sony

October 20, 2008 By Digital Trends Staff

A much-anticipated game has been recalled from stores after it's discovered that a background track contains two phrases from the Koran.

Video games cause controversy, but this instance might be a first: Sony has had to recall the PS3 game LittleBigPlanet after a forum contributor noted that one of its background tracks contains two phrases from the Koran. Mixing music and words from that book could cause offense to some Muslims.

According to the BBC, Sony has apologized for that, and will have a revised version of the games in stores next month. Given that the company has high hopes for the game, developed by Media Molecule, it wants it out there as quickly as possible.

LittleBigPlanet lets users build their own playground levels – in fact, almost everything, from characters to textures – then swap them over the PlayStationNetwork with others.

Showing 3 comments

tom heneghan at 12:37pm 21st October 2008 Should Sony hire a religious affairs advisor to help with questions like this? Discuss it at FaithWorld -- http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2008/10/21/doe...
OK at 11:30am 20th October 2008 If sony did see this as a publicity stunt then that is bang out of order (cheap way to expose thier brand). If this was accidental then good on Sony for calling back the games without offending the Muslim world.
adam at 9:54am 20th October 2008 Yeah, right. Sounds a bit fishy to me. Sony, who were quite happy to offend some pretty serious folks at the Church of England, suddenly pull their product because of one crazy Muslim who doesn't even begin to speak for mainstream Islam?

I don't believe a word of it. Sounds like a carefully planned publicity stunt to me. And successful too: just look how widely this story has been reported.