LittleBigPlanet delayed due to Muslim sensitivities

Mike Bantick
Monday, 20 October 2008 03:18

Your IT - Entertainment

What will be one of the PS3’s biggest titles for the year has been delayed.  The adventures of Sackboy and Sackgirl in LittleBigPlanet will have to wait until offensive material is removed from the game.

So close, yet no cigar, Sony have replaced this week’s release date for LittleBigPlanet with a revised date (in North America at least) of October 27th.

This is due to an 11th Hour issue raise by a beta tester around content contained in the background music of the puzzle/construction game.

A song by grammy award winner Tapha Niang contains lyrics taken from the Muslim holy book the Qur’an.

According to a beta tester and poster on  a beta response forum, the track titled Swinging Safari contains the following Qur’an references;  kollo nafsin tha'iqatol mawt", literally: 'Every soul shall have the taste of death' and "kollo man alaiha fan", literally: 'All that is on earth will perish'.

According to the poster, the issue is not so much the quoting of holy book references, but the fact that they are used in conjunction with music, which is – again according to the poster – deeply offensive to the Muslim faith.

The official PlayStation Blog now lists the week of October 27th as a shopping date for the highly anticipated game.

It is a shame, but that is the idea of a beta test, to flush out anything that may cause a game to fail in its public life.  Whether it is simple coding issues or the likes of this case, where cultural sensitivities are inadvertently bruised.