The plug's been pulled, for now, on "Six Days in Fallujah."
Japan's Asahi Shimbun newspaper reported Tuesday that game publisher Konami has decided not to release the ultra-realistic Iraq combat game, which is based on the bloody 2004 battle between American and Iraqi uniformed personnel and Iraqi insurgents.
"After seeing the reaction to the videogame in the United States and hearing opinions sent through phone calls and e-mail, we decided several days ago not to sell it," a public-relations official at Konami told the newspaper. "We had intended to convey the reality of the battles to players so that they could feel what it was like to be there."
Atomic Games, based in San Francisco, had gotten the input of dozens of soldiers and Marines to make the game as real as possible. But families of fallen GIs and veterans' groups were outraged, blasting the game concept as exploitative and distasteful.
"These people who aren't affected by the war get to sit on their couch and play this 'fun' game," one woman whose only son was killed in Iraq told the military-personnel newspaper Stars and Stripes earlier this month. "This isn't fun."
It's still entirely possible Atomic Games could find another publisher to manufacture and distribute the game.
Yea that makes real sense to cancel this game... because every single WWII and Vietnam shooter out there is full of carebears and fictional events. What about the Black Hawk Down game? That is recent enough and plenty of Americans died during that. People are stupid. I hope this game gets picked up by a new publisher because it looked really good.