Controversial US–Iran war video game sees 250% spike in play amid real-world tension

Battlefield 3, a video game that simulates a fictional war between the United States and Iran, has been steeply discounted, even as real-world tension rises between the two countries.

The game, developed by DICE studios and published by Electronic Arts, was originally released in 2011. It went on sale for 95 per cent off globally on Thursday for one week via the popular digital storefront Steam.

While the game has often gone on discount since its release, the timing of the latest sale has raised eyebrows in the gaming community, with fans questioning the move.

“They saw an opportunity to make some money,” said one X user, with another adding: “Life imitates art.”

According to the independent database SteamDB, player counts have risen nearly 250 per cent since the day before the sale.

In the game, Iran is presented as a country hijacked by extremists, leading to a US military invasion, with key sequences depicting combat across the country.

The game garnered controversy upon release, with Iran banning its sale and strictly cracking down on the distribution of pirated copies. Iranian gamers also protested the release of the game, calling for an apology from its developers.

There is no indication that the current discount was deliberately timed to current events, as the publisher is offering summer discounts on many of its library titles.

“It's probably a coincidence and not nefarious,” added another X user.

The National has reached out to game publisher Electronic Arts for comment.

The combat simulator Call of Duty series, published by Activision Blizzard, garnered controversy for its depiction of conflict in real-world countries. In 2019, the first Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, which imagined a conflict between the US and Russia received sizeable backlash for what users called “anti-Russian propaganda”.

The Call of Duty: Modern Warfare sequels have since avoided depicting real countries as a stage for war, instead setting conflicts in fictional countries such as Urzikstan.

This is not the first time that a video game has seen a spike in popularity in the wake of real-world happenings. In early 2020 in the early days of Covid-19, the pandemic-themed game Plague Inc shot to the top of the Apple App Store across the world, prompting China, one of the game's settings, to declare the release “illegal” in February of that year.

Ndemic Creations, the developers of the strategy simulation game in which players evolve a deadly pathogen to infect and eliminate the human population, issued a public statement urging people not to use the game as a source of real-world medical information. The firm later donated $250,000 to the World Health Organisation and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations towards relief efforts.