Capcom pulls Street Fighter V DLC
Publisher apologizes as background music of new stage contained "unintentional religious references"
Street Fighter V's latest downloadable content has been temporarily pulled from sale. The fighting game's Thailand Temple Hideout Stage released on Monday, but was pulled Tuesday because, according to Capcom, the background music in the stage "contains unintentional religious references."
During an emergency overnight server maintenance, Capcom replaced the Thailand stage's background track with pre-existing music from another stage. The company said it is working on an edited version of the original track with the religious references removed, and will resume sales of the DLC once it is ready.
"The Street Fighter V development and operations team, as well as all of us at Capcom, have nothing but the utmost respect for all faiths and religions around the world, and we would like to sincerely apologize to anyone who was offended by this content," Capcom said.
Religiously influenced background music has caused problems for publishers before. In 2008, Sony delayed the worldwide release of the PS3 platformer LittleBigPlanet after a review process found one of the licensed background music tracks quoted the Qur'an. Going back another generation, Microsoft recalled the Xbox fighting game Kakuto Chojin in 2003 after complaints arose that a piece of background music in the game sampled passages from the same holy book.