Activision will cut Itaewon crush footage from Modern Warfare 4 on November 12

Activision will remove real footage of the 2022 Itaewon crowd crush from the opening cinematic of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 in an update due on November 12, 2026. The change follows complaints from families of the victims, first reported by the Korea Herald and picked up by PC Gamer and GameSpot.

What happened

The crush took place in October 2022 during Halloween celebrations in Seoul's Itaewon district, when a crowd surge in narrow alleys killed more than 150 people and injured close to 200 more. Modern Warfare 4's intro cut clips of that disaster into a montage showing the aftermath of a fictional North Korean invasion of South Korea, the premise of the game's campaign.

Activision first said the footage was used only to establish the game's fictional story and was not meant to "reference or trivialize" the real event. That did not satisfy the families. In a statement reported by the BBC, they called using the tragedy as entertainment material "highly inappropriate and senseless" and asked Activision to correct it without delay.

The publisher has now agreed. "We offer our deepest condolences and sincere apologies to the bereaved families, victims and everyone who has been deeply hurt or distressed by this incident," Activision said.

Why it landed badly

Modern Warfare 4 is built around a war on the Korean Peninsula, and its campaign follows Private Park, a young South Korean soldier, through trench fighting at the front. Setting the story in a real country raised the stakes for how the game handles real South Korean history, and the Itaewon footage crossed a line for the people most affected. Unlike the invented war around it, the footage showed a real peacetime civilian disaster, one many Korean players remember vividly.

What happens next

Until the November 12 patch lands, the original cinematic stays in the game. Activision has not said whether the replacement will be new footage or a shortened intro. MW4 launched on October 22 on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch 2; the first content season begins on November 6, six days before the fix.

Source: PC Gamer; GameSpot; Korea Herald; BBC; Activision (Steam).