Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is getting a big reveal today. The game has been teased for a few weeks now, and finally we’re going to get a proper look at it today. However, the teaser trailer for the game has actually been altered, though you may not have noticed it. Check out the trailer below, and see if you can notice anything that’s missing from the original version.
If you picked up on the fact that some footage from Tiananmen Square is missing, you’d be correct. The original teaser featured a couple of seconds of footage, some of which also showed students attacking an armoured vehicle. This is due to a government crackdown on pro-democracy protestors in the 1980s, something China is keen for the world to forget. Of course, it’s clearly a big part of human history around the Cold War, and will almost certainly play some part in the game, but for now it looks like it’s been removed from the teaser.
The original video was up briefly, but then got swapped out. Some press outlets like Kotaku picked up on it because their articles suddenly featured private videos. I think most other outlets simply found the new video and updated their articles though.
Part of the reason that the video was changed is because Activision wants to be able to sell their game to the Chinese market. Of course, Tencent, a tech giant based in China, also owns 5 percent of Activision, which is the other reason this trailer probably had to be changed. You can only imagine the frantic calls that would have been going on between China and the US as they attempted to sort this out.
As of now though, the matter is dealt with. However, this does indicate that there will be certain parts of history that the game simply doesn’t touch upon. If it does, then Activision can probably say goodbye to any Chinese sales they hoped to make. This wouldn’t be the first time that a Call of Duty game was blocked though, or at least censored. Modern Warfare 2 was censored in Russia due to the infamous No Russian mission. Maybe there will be something similar that makes Black Ops Cold War too controversial for China this year.