How can they do this if they were able to approve games such as GTA IV? That’s as offensive as you can get! Well, it depends on your definition of offensive and what kind of offensive language you mean. In the case of Little Big Planet, it seems that there were words from the Koran that were used in a song. That fact spawned a lot of noise in the Muslim community in the United Kingdom.
Apparently, one of the songs used for background music in Little Big Planet mentions phrases from the Koran. Sang by Toumani Diabate, a Mali-born singer and himself a Muslim, the song was noticed by Yasser, a gaming enthusiast who promptly posted an entry on the official PlayStation Forum. He is quoted as saying “we Muslims consider the mixing of music and words from our Holy Qur’an deeply offending.”
In order to avoid further damage, Sony and Media Molecule, the game’s developers, have decided to recall the copies that have been released. According to the statement in Media Molecule’s web site:
As some of you may have noticed, LBP has been slightly delayed in some territories. At MM we were as shocked and dismayed by this as anyone – shellshocked and gutted. We can’t wait for you all to get playing and creating!
We learnt yesterday that there is a lyric in one of the licensed tracks which some people may find offensive, and which slipped through the usual screening processes. Obviously MM and Sony together took this very seriously. LBP should be enjoyable by all. So within 12 hours of hearing about this issue involving a lyric (in Somalian, I believe!), Media Molecule had prepared an automatic day 0 patch and had a new disk image ready; however a decision was made within Sony that the right thing to do for quality and support of people with no on-line was to replace existing disks. They assure us that they are doing everything in their power to get things straightened out as fast as possible, and will announce dates soon.
There you go. People in the UK, you just have to wait a little bit longer.