EA in Hot Water Over Alleged Use of Conflict Imagery in Battlefield Art

Who cares in all reality? It's a game..

The YouTuber TacticalBrit already confirmed that the concept art is based on a location in Gibraltar.

@nessisonett I was in combat during my time in the Army. I'm not sure why you would choose to go find images of that, unless you live there. You aren't doing yourself any favors traumatizing yourself. Guess what? They'll be fighting in the streets for 2000 years in the future, too. It's pointless to go tit for tat on every grievance when tribal differences mean more than the lives of their children.

@Northern_munkey I think that's the point...

Western companies love making money off of the deaths of people who suffer systematically, either by selling the bombs or selling the image of war. Military shooters have long been tools for the US military industrial complex, notably for the US army to recruit people and glorify their efforts. I mean this with no exaggeration, if this is true (which it’s looks to be) then it’s one of the most disgusting things EA has ever pulled. I wouldn’t be surprised if people said it wasn’t a big deal—this has become incredibly normalized in our society. But grow some amount of awareness and you’ll be able to understand how messed up this is.

@LikelySatan I was saying this before all the comments after start to make another article about a game a means to start a political debate about how unethical it is to supposedly use a recent conflict in promotional artwork. So far so good..

@Deoxyr1bose It's not a big deal because it's simply, a game.

@Deoxyr1bose have you ever bought a call of duty game or a battlefield game? You say western company's love making money out of the suffering of victims of war etc but if you purchase one of their games are you not yourself part of that machination?

@nessisonett What are you even talking about? Ethnic cleansing? Do you not even know what the terms your using means? This site is a place to talk about games, not spew your nonsensical propaganda.

Seriously.... ? This kind of implies any game that has used stock footage as reference should be held to the same account... or are we saying they used reference material from the wrong side? I'm confused... is the game set in or around Gaza? Is it even set in the Middle East (I really don't know). From the image supplied, I don't see any other feature resemblance other than a fireball/smoke. Hate to tell people... all that stock footage/imagery that is used by games artists for countless games most likely was from some real war or other.

Are we meant to be railing against lazy artists, or the insensitivity on using art based on war? Or is this suggesting this is somehow dog-whistling - even though I suspect there's only the one person in the world that was so invested in this they trawled through god knows how much imagery/footage to make a connection and to prove a point.

And I'm sorry @nessisonett but making that sort of statement is a little weird (and I'm putting that politely). You are making so many value/moral judgements without any knowledge ... Would it have been better to have referenced an explosion from a different war? A different people? A worse people? If so, what war? What people?

Commercial artists use realworld references all the time - without moral/political implications (if they are simply professionally fulfilling their brief... generate a bit of commercial art). If they had used imagery of a mutilated Gazan child's body, you might have had a point.

Let's not get into the culture war of war-games (as a proxy for the Israel / Gaza issue).... please god... give it a rest. Edit - and let this forum be about games.

@Oz_Who_Dat_Dare @YoureTooSlowBro amen..keep it about the games.

@YoureTooSlowBro It’s not propaganda. It’s really not difficult to read a few books and understand history. Although that shouldn’t be necessary if you’re paying attention to what’s happening.

@LikelySatan Nobody is looking for it, but if you pay any attention to what’s going on in the news you’ll come across it. Such a surface level understanding of what’s going there, describing it as “tribal difference” ffs.

@ShadowofSparta
The problem is when people pick an arbitrary point in history in order to…serve propaganda purposes. How far do you go back in his case? A few weeks? October 7th? 7th century? Earliest recorded inhabitants of the area? I’m not stating a preference myself, just pointing out that “read a history book”, inevitably involves personal editing and choices when determining which ones describing which period…

Anyone can be a hero or a villain depending on where you decide to begin or end the narrative.

Ironically here, ai driven or stock images rarely receive significant human editing.

Let's everyone NOT comment on political / world events - unless it relates to games. We can just play games... seriously, no one looking at this art is thinking "that's so political"... unless you view everything through a polical lens. Not that anyone needs to care what I say, but maybe this story was kinda a pretty weak story looking for controversy. We don't need to feed it. Whether it was lazy, whether it was AI, or whether its culture wars... do we need to find the most innocuous things to fight about?

I preferred when we got angry about bad narratives, bland character designs, or poor frame-rates, or cringey writing... now we get angry about bad fireballs....tsk tsk those bad, BAD fireballs.

That's not saying anyone's view on politics, religion is wrong [edit - I fully support everyone's right to have whatever view they want as long as it's not impacting on other people's lives]... it just means we don't need to make everything about making a moral stand about everything.

Sometimes a fireball is just a fireball.

The real question is, Will the next battlefield game be good or Total ***** like the last two games?

People in the comments complaining about "uhhh it's political uhhh" are being ridiculous. It's an active genocide where 45,000+ people have died and they copy and pasted from imagery from it to promote their product. It's ghoulish and disgusting, and if you don't get that reexamine your humanity.

If true, f ea and this game.

@Blauwe_Chimay finally... the nub of the story... will the next Battlefield game be good? Thank you. And unfortunately, the answer is likely no.... because they've lost all their magic long ago. I hope to be wrong however. Edit - to provide some context... I lost my love in the BF2/BF3 era... that was back when they kicked <proverbial> ... but it also means, perhaps I'm not their target demographic.

They used the black smoke from a photo. No one in their right minds should have even bothered to find out where it came from. Get over it.

@SeanOhOgain the word genocide might fit your narrative but is factually wrong. Also we have all been getting entertainment in movies and games about the two world wars where millions were killed. Is that ghoulish and disgusting too?

If EA, Ubisoft, etc even sneeze, the hate mob come running with forks and spikes.

@YoureTooSlowBro He likely didn't have a good Monday lol like so many others throwing their toys out of pram!

@Oz_Who_Dat_Dare

I played 2042 about ten minuts. A waste of data. I moved on from battlefield to hell let loose and arma Reforger.

@Blauwe_Chimay the BF franchise used to be something really meaty... but I also bounced off 2042 (after wanting to get back into the vibe). It just felt without heart (and yes, I appreciate the weirdness of thinking old BF games had heart... but they felt somehow more like a community of people that were all in on the same joke/experience, and loved it because of it).

I'm gonna have to give EA/DICE the benefit of the doubt on this one. My assumption is the fault lies with an asset library that was used by the artist. Artists can't be expected to find the source for every single asset in a library; that's on whoever put the library together.

Even so, it's a game about war. Chances are, you're going to see actual war imagery. It's kinda unavoidable.

So, with that said, what's the appropriate amount of time to pass before a real-world image can be used for fictional purposes? It's kind of like asking, "When does grave-robbing become archeology?"...

@Psofo The word genocide has actual meaning, but these kids have been so brainwashed through TikTok or Twitter they don't know what it means. They just repeat what people with a bunch of likes say. You also bring up a really great point. We use footage of WW2 where millions of people were killed, but if you use a footage where a few tens of thousands were killed it's ghoulish? I wonder why that is.. judging from some people in these comments using words like genocide and ethnic cleansing incorrectly it seems like it's to push some sort of narrative.

I was expecting to see an image that had some sort of similarities but this is an exact image with an extra mountain. EA this is disgusting.