A Call Of Duty: Black Ops 7 advert starring Peter Stormare and Nikki Glaser has been banned in the UK for “trivialising sexual violence”.
Originally released last November to promote the launch of Call Of Duty: Black Ops 7, the advert saw Peter Stormare and Nikki Glaser working at airport security as “replacers” – allowing the actual members of staff to take a day off to play COD instead.
The clip, which is still available to watch on YouTube, starts with Glaser pocketing a holidaymaker’s watch and when he complains, Stormare informs him he’s been “randomly selected to be manhandled”. After pretending to scan him with a metal detector, Stormare tells him to remove his clothes (“everything but the shoes”) as Glaser puts on a rubber glove and says it’s “time for the puppet show”.
“Bite down on this [metal detector], she’s going in dry,” adds Stormare.
According to the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), nine people complained that the 30-second clip “trivialised sexual violence” and “challenged whether the ad was irresponsible and offensive.”
Activision Blizzard defended the advert, saying it was intended for an adult audience “who had a higher tolerance for irreverent or exaggerated humour.” They added that the ad “depicted a deliberately implausible, parodic scenario that bore no resemblance to real airport security procedures,” and didn’t show anything explicit.
However ASA ruled “that the humour in the ad was generated by the humiliation and implied threat of painful, non-consensual penetration of the man, an act associated with sexual violence. Because the ad alluded to non-consensual penetration, and framed it as an entertaining scenario, we considered that the ad trivialised sexual violence and was therefore irresponsible and offensive.”
Following the ruling, the ad will not be allowed to be broadcast in the UK “in its current form” and Activision Blizzard were told to “ensure that their ads were socially responsible and did not cause serious offence,” in the future.
At the end of last year, Call Of Duty bosses promised major changes following the lacklustre response to Black Ops 7. “We know that for some of you, the franchise has not met your expectations fully. To be very clear, we know what you expect and rest assured we will deliver, and overdeliver, on those expectations as we move forward.”
In other news Rockstar Games, the developers of Grand Theft Auto 6 and Red Dead Redemption 2, has defended taking millions of pounds in tax relief from the British government.
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