Medal Of Honor Suffers Partial US Ban

The tide of controversy continues around EA’s big Christmas hope, Medal of Honor. The US military have requested that all 49 Gamestop stores located in its army and air force bases do not stock the game, due to its inclusion of playable Taliban forces in the game. An email obtained by Kotaku apparently reads:

“GameStop has agreed out of respect for our past and present men and women in uniform we will not carry Medal of Honor in any of our AAFES based stores. As such, GameStop agreed to have all marketing material pulled by noon today and to stop taking reservations. Customers who enter our AAFES stores and wish to reserve Medal of Honor can and should be directed to the nearest GameStop location off base.”

“GameStop fully supports AAFES in this endeavour and is sensitive to the fact that in multiplayer mode one side will assume the role of Taliban fighter.”

Last month Conservative defence secretary Liam Fox appealed to British stores to refuse to stock the game to show their support to the armed forces, claiming that he did not support a product that depicted British troops being killed - despite the fact there are no British forces in the game.

It remains to be seen whether any more bans will affect the game’s launch, although the irony is that all this publicity is doing a hell of a lot of free marketing on the game’s behalf.