A PIL has been filed that could prevent the AR game from officially launching in India, but that’s not the first game to “offend”people.
However unlikely as it may seem, Pokémon GO finds itself in the middle of a major controversy and a court case in India. As it turns out a PIL (Public Interest Litigation) has been filed against the game in the Gujarat High Court in an attempt to ban it from ever launching in India.
Those of you following the game probably know half the country has been unable to play for over a month now and with this PIL it seems like the other half might just join them soon enough. The main issue here seems to be the fact that a lot of the locations in the GPS-based game happen to be temples and that these locations often dispense out Pokémon eggs which are apparently insulting our faith (really guys ). The latest internet buzz is that religious people have a problem with gamers coming to temples in search of imaginary creatures, well played internet. Well played.
However this isn’t the first time that a video game has attracted controversy in India with a few popular games called out for being ‘insensitive and inaccurate’ in their depiction of Hindu gods, and people do tend to get too sensitive.
The first major issue was back in 2012 when Rajan Zed, head of the Universal Society for Hinduism called for removal of all Hindu deities from the game Smite as he was unhappy with their depiction, citing they are meant to be worshiped not reduced to video game characters. Oddly enough in a game with Greek, Hindu, Chinese and Norse Gods among others, he’s the only one with any sort of problem. The second issue with a game once again comes from Rajan Zed who went after Blizzard this time for their alternate appearance of Symmetra as ‘Devi’. However, the issue seems more to do with players controlling a God or Goddess rather than their appearance as in real life devotees put their destinies in the hands of their gods, not the other way around.
While both of Rajan’s claims lead to no real change in terms of the Gods being represented in games, this time it’s a little bit different as there’s an actual PIL filed in India and even though there have been concerns over the game causing safety issues for players, the fact that its apparently hurting religions sentiments might just be the tipping point. After all my religious beliefs are more important than you probably walking into traffic over a game, right
