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EA backs down and pulls Medal Of Honor: Warfighter tomahawk

Company removes branded tomahawk from sale and pulls blog posts touting deals with weapons manufacturers.

EA has removed a branded Medal Of Honor: Warfighter tomahawk from sale and pulled a series of blog posts from the game's executive producer touting official partnerships with weapons manufacturers.

As we reported yesterday, the blog posts, written by executive producer Greg Goodrich, contained links to each manufacturer's official website, where guns, attachments and tactical accessories could be ordered online and delivered to a local weapons dealer.

While they're still published on the Warfighter site - here's Goodrich on the CS5 sniper rifle by which, remember, he was "blown away" - they can no longer be found using the website's navigation menu.

Also gone is SOG Knives' limited edition Voodoo Hawk, a tomahawk designed for the game and made in real life with Medal Of Honor branding on the handle. The standard, branding-free edition is still available to pre-order on SOG's site.

Speaking to Eurogamer at Gamescom yesterday, Goodrich confirmed that the posts and tomahawk had been pulled, but insisted his conscience was clear because proceeds from the sale of the Voodoo Hawk had been earmarked for Project Honor, an EA scheme to support the Navy Seal Foundation and the Special Operations Warrior Foundation, which provide support to fallen and wounded members of the military and their families.

"That whole effort, we've been working with these partners because we wanted to be authentic, and we wanted to give back to the communities," he said. "Every one of those partners, none of them paid a dime for product placement - all the money generated went to Project Honor.

"We're making a firstperson shooter and it fits. If we were doing Need For Speed we'd do something different. If I was doing FIFA it'd be something different. But we're making a firstperson shooter about the warfighter. If we partnered with another brand it wouldn't make sense and it wouldn't be authentic."

Progress, then - of sorts, anyway. Yet Goodrich seems unrepentant - the changes to the campaign have been brought on by the outcry, and there is no admission of wrongdoing whatsoever - and those partnerships with manufacturers are still very much in place.

Comments

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WarioSpeedwagon's picture

No one knew or cared about this game last week. Someone in ea's marketing dept is currently rolling around in their undies through a bed full of $100's ala Demi Moore in indecent proposal imo

Marijn Lems's picture

@WarioSpeedwagon NSS. In some cases, there IS such a thing as bad publicity - and having your FPS be known as "that game that has ties with arms dealers" is definitely up there (in Europe, at least).

EnufZnuf's picture

I'm American and can assure you they've upped their sales by at least several million over here. People in the NRA will go out of their way to buy their kids this game.