Not that we in South Africa would know, but Call of Duty’s mostly free Call of Duty Elite service highlights some community members’ Youtube video choices as hand-selected “Staff Picks.” Usually, it’s the sort of stuff you’d expect from anything Call of Duty related; insane kill streaks, amazing knife kills and magical grenades that kill people from half way across the in-game map.
For at least a week though, those staff picks included archive footage of Hitler – and a video of the song Aryan Pride from white separatist group Final War. Activision’s now responded – saying it was all a linking error.
“We’re aware of a user linking questionable materials to Call of Duty Elite. This video is in no way an Elite staff pick, but rather a linking issue that has since been remedied by the Elite Live Operations and Beachhead team,” the company said in a statement to Kotaku. “Material of this nature does not belong on Elite and we are working to prevent these types of issues from happening in the future,” they appealed. “The content originated on a third-party video hosting site, a fix has since been pushed and we expect to see a solution this morning.
“Elite reserves the right to ban users who violate the Call of Duty Elite terms of service and code of conduct.”
If that’s true, then it does highlight just how impersonal the “staff picks” really are – and that they’re just using a dodgy computer algorithm in place of well, people.
Usually I’d inject a bit of tasteless humour here, but Nazi jokes are a little out of Mein Kampfort zone.
Last Updated: April 18, 2012
