So with less than a week until its release, one of the PS3’s most important games has been recalled and pushed back, all because of one complaint from someone who has guaranteed himself a lifetime of hate mail after he made the post with his PSN ID attached. To be fair it’s not his fault because he just asked for a quick patch, not a full recall, but you only have to browse through that thread for the post-delay posts to see that people inevitably aren’t seeing it that way.

The fact that LBP was recalled after a single post from a Muslim player while Resistance’s complaint from the Church of England garnered only an apology does somewhat play into certain groups’ hands, though. Don’t expect to hear the end of that any time soon.

It does seem like an unnecessary reaction to me. Like the guy asked for, a patch would have sufficed for now, and the song could be properly removed from all future pressings. Everyone’s happy, and the handful who’ll buy it without online access and even notice could, I’m sure, just ask for an exchange for future ‘fixed’ versions. Now there are probably millions of discs that will end up being destroyed – or on eBay at hugely inflated prices – and the marketing effort will be disrupted as people go to check out this new game that they’ve seen the reviews for and it’s not there.

I’m deliberately avoiding the ‘political correctness gone mad’ and ‘I think we all know why this garnered such a reaction nudge-nudge-wink-wink’ rubbish that I’m seeing everywhere because I hate it and it’s a bit Daily Mail, but there’s no reason to ruin it for everyone else because of a song that’s generally available on iTunes, free to listen to on MySpace (‘Tapha Niang’ in the audio player on the right), and apparently won a Grammy.

Religion is a personal choice, as is listening to a pretty beautiful song and playing the game. I’m not going to get political with that whole debate about whether religion deserves to be put on a pedestal – it doesn’t, but I said I’m not debating it ;) – but please, don’t make Everest out of a molehill when the most people want is Ben Nevis.