EA has confirmed it will not be selling Dragon Age: Inquisition in India.
All pre-orders for the game have been cancelled in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
“In order to avoid a breach of local content laws, EA has withdrawn Dragon Age: Inquisition from sale in India and the game is no longer available for pre-order,” explained EA in a statement.
“All affected purchases for Dragon Age: Inquisition will be refunded. This applies regardless of payment method or date of purchase.
“Customers who pre-ordered the game will be contacted directly and will be fully refunded.”
According to NDTV, the local Indian distributor Milestone Interactive confirmed that homosexual sex scenes were the issue. EA has yet to confirm whether or not the homosexual scenes were the reason why the game was pulled.
Both previous games in the Dragon Age series are still available on the Origin store. It appears as though EA has attempted to deflect any potential issues with the game in that region by simply not making it available. Considering that EA and Dragon Age games typically shift very few units in that region, it might not be worth the potential headache that releasing a game in that region may cause.
But that feels very unfair for gamers in that region who are interested in Dragon Age: Inquisition. It’s a difficult situation for sure, and of course cultural norms in India are very different from our own, particularly in regards to homosexuality. In India homosexuality is still very much illegal and has been since 1861. Homosexuality carries a 10 year sentence for those who are successfully convicted.
All attempts to change the situation in India have failed. In 2009 a Delhi High Court ruled existing legislation to be unconstitutional, but recently, in December 2013 that ruling was overturned by the Supreme Court of India, meaning that homosexual intercourse was once again illegal in India.
“This is a right decision, we welcome it,” said Om Prakash Singhal, vice-president of Vishva Hindu Parishad, a right wing organisation in India. “Homosexuality is against Indian culture, against nature and against science. We are regressing, going back to when we were almost like animals.”
Maulana Madni, a spokesperson for Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind said: “In a society, a family is made up of a man and a woman, not a woman and a woman, or a man and a man. If these same sex couples adopt children, the child will grow up with a skewed version of a family. Society will disintegrate.”
In a situation like this, it’s difficult to blame EA for just avoiding the discussion altogether.
Comments
38 responses to “Dragon Age: Inquisition Pulled From India”
Time to Import and Pirate India!
My computer cant store a billion people and their religious bigotries!!!
TRY HARDER, WE MUST SAVE THEM!! TO A HARD DRIVE
OH GOD THEYRE ALL ASKING IF MY COMPUTER HAS EXPERIENCED HACKING LATELY! ALL OF THEM!
Hello. I’m calling from Windows to tell you we’ve detected a problem with you hard drive.
Yeah but, how good was the customer service? Did they provide you with good customer service?
Up until they found out my desktop was gay…
lol well thats the perfect way to end that.
OMG he’s trying to start a customer service Vindaloop!!
Against Science?
My superstitious beliefs tell me that your natural inclinations are against science!
I don’t get it. Murder is illegal, but games with murder in them are still available?
Age of consent is 16 but take a photograph of your 16 year old girlfriend and see how that goes.
I don’t know if those things are actually comparable.
There’s genuine harm that can be done through the inappropriate photography of a “minor”.
Believe me, I’m not advocating for CP any more than I’m advocating for real life murder (regardless of what I might say when I’m losing at Halo). My point was that some things are legal or illegal in media irrespective of the status of their real life counterpart. Apparently, at least according to EA, it’s potentially illegal to depict homosexual characters in a game – I assume depictions of murder, theft, drug usage, etc are not illegal to be depicted in fiction even though those things are illegal in real life.
Just to make sure – before the rumour mill turns this into another “EA is covering something up” story, it wasn’t EA that said it, it was the local Indian distributor and EA’s yet to confirm or deny.
I’m not quite following the point you’re making there.
My question is why there’s an issue with the depiction of this particular thing that this society has deemed ‘illegal’ – were there problems with other depictions of illegal activities in games like ‘Thief’ or ‘Grand Theft Auto’ (where you don’t even have to get past the title for that)
I have to assume that (EA thinks) it’s illegal to depict homosexual characters in a game or fiction. I’d personally be interested to know how they reached this conclusion.
I think it probably is illegal.
If you’ve got a practice where you’re arresting consenting adults for “immoral” behaviour in their own homes then I don’t see why a country which until very recently had a ban on heterosexual kissing in film would allow depictions of homesexual behaviour in the media.
I know it’s fun, but I don’t think we can blame EA for this one at all.
Maybe they should just leave it on a server somewhere that it can be downloaded in India. It doesn’t do the downloader much good though if they then get arrested for being in possession of “gay material”.
They, like the rest of us have differing standards for media depictions compared to real life.
I guess the thinking is that seeing violence is less likely to elicit an emotional reaction than sex does so the “impact” of seeing sex on screen is greater.
To be fair we do it here too:
Murder is illegal but you can depict it on screen and earn an M rating.
Sex is legal but depicting it in a graphic manner will quickly earn you an adult rating.
If you can ignore the stupidity of making homosexuality illegal then the media ban sits in line with how many western countries censor things.
In the minds of some people: Murder is ‘natural’, but Homosexuality is apparently ‘unnatural’.
Ergo… Depicting the former is tolerable while the latter other is not.
Here’s a ridiculous idea… instead of wasting their time campaigning against Homosexuals, why don’t they make themselves actually useful and contribute to campaigning against the rampant Sexual Assault problems they’re having in India instead?
Jesus. And I thought we had it bad here with censorship.
I think this is the right move by EA. If the more open-minded decide that playing an awesome game is more important than being a
fucking bigot– sorry, adhering to local cultural norms (I still almost didn’t make it through that phrase without snark) then maybe they’ll agitate for change. Especially if it happens enough.Priorities.
India are notoriously anti-gay, which really sucks for the gay indians.
Because of their culture a lot of them end up in marriages they don’t want and have to convincingly play the part of straight guys (or girls I guess) or risk becoming an utter pariah.
Did this happen with Dragon Age 2? Fenris was bisexual iirc.
Yep, it was and still is available. Maybe they get a bit more explicit in this game though. Or maybe they’re just using it as an excuse not to bother releasing it there since sales have been so poor.
It’s also partly because the recently voted in political party is more right wing and religious than the previous ruling party.
I believe the difference is that one of the characters is only gay, i.e. you can only pursue a romantic relationship with him if you are playing a male character. Previous Bioware games have had bisexual characters where a homosexual relationship was an option. In fact everyone in DA2 swings both ways, but I think Bioware realized that that’s kind of silly.
I’m pretty sure everyone in Dragon Age 2 swung both ways… which was kind crazy in it’s own right.
At least with digital distribution it’s pretty easy to get around this kind of thing these days – they can just make a US account on PSN or XBL or whatever and download it that way.
Ouch.
This was kind of a shitty start to the morning :'(
It’s not exactly a choice, India.
I’m actually really quite happy that the game was pulled and that the optional gay sex was left in.
That might just be my scorn talking though.
Look at the first statement – He states it’s against nature however he follows it up by comparing people regressing to animals. In a single sentence he makes two comparisons that completely cancel each other out; that shows the amount of logic/reason that went into coming up with that sentiment.
Just absolute fucking idiots. The end.
Now, now, they’re just protecting their society! It’ll disintegrate if gay people are allowed to be gay and would you want to be responsible for something like that??
Fuck it, if being gay actually was a choice, I’d join in for a while and help bring down a society like that…
Oh lord. I feel really badly for homosexuals in India, and the Dragon Age fans there. Just because a group of law-making morons don’t agree with something that is actually very natural, a lot of people have to suffer.
I hope EA and Bioware turns a blind eye to the piracy that will occur soon.
Just woke up to this.
Being an Indian and looking forward to this game i find this extremely inappropriate.
Boohoo now im sad.
Time to import.
But oh yeah dude. Hindi is a religion of peace and love. Just ask all the hippies.
Is buddhism big in India too?
“Homosexuality is against indian culture” BAHAHAHAAA!! Wow, because the Kama sutra doesn’t show lesbian sex scenes in various female-female positions right? I bet he encourages the corrupt dowery system of India where it’s alright to rape a woman and burn her face with acid if her family’s dowry isn’t enough.
Hahahahaha, so homosexual characters in a video game are completely unacceptable within Indian culture, yet it’s seemingly okay to sometimes objectify and sexually victimize their own women folk? well done India!!
Also, is it just me or doesn’t it seem a touch absurd that a culture that feels so strongly about homosexuality seems to simply adore musical cinema? hmmm, well done again India!!