The reason for the Halo 2 delay? Partial Nudity.
- May 25, 2007 10:20 AM PST
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Microsoft goofs as a potentially offensive picture makes its way into Halo 2 for Windows Vista, which is the reason for the game's recent nine-day delay.
By Eugene Huang
Just yesterday, GamePro had reported that the Windows Vista version of Halo 2 would be delayed until May 31st, the second delay for the title in only one month. Although Microsoft gave an explanation of last minute game tweaking for the first delay, the company was oddly silent about the reasons behind the second until today.
According to a Microsoft spokesperson, a brief glimpse of partial nudity is the reason behind this latest delay, as the company scatters to make sure that the correct ESRB label is affixed to the game.
"It has come to our attention that an unfortunate, obscure content error which includes partial nudity was included in our initial production of Halo 2 for Windows Vista," the spokesperson said in a statement. "As such, we have updated the initial game packaging at retailers with a label, so customers are aware before purchasing the game. Additionally, we've developed an online update which can be downloaded from www.halo2.com to remove the content."
Although the company did not offer specifics regarding the offending material, GameDaily Biz recently contacted the ESRB to clear up the situation. According to their response, the nudity in question was accidentally left in a normally inaccessible portion of the map editor tool.
"The content in question, although likely to be inaccessible to the vast majority of users, displays a photograph of an individual showing his bare backside to the user when a particular error occurs, and thus warrants a 'Partial Nudity' content descriptor in order to alert consumers to its presence in the product," the ESRB spokesperson writes.
Oh, those wacky programmers.
