Sony game upsets Church

The Church of England is outraged by the use of Manchester Cathedral as a backdrop in Sony’s violent PS3 game, Resistance: Fall of Man.

The church has set its sights on the company and has threatened to sue Sony unless it complies to its list of demands. A virtual version of Manchester Cathedral appears as a key location for bloody shoot-outs in the game, which has sold over one million copies.

The church has alleged that the cathedral has been inappropriately used and the game only exacerbates real-life gun crime in the Manchester area.

It is demanding that Sony apologises, conducts a complete withdrawal or modification of the game, forks out a sizeable donation of the profits to help the Church’s youth programmes and battle against gun crime in the area.

“It is well known that Manchester has a gun crime problem,” said the Bishop of Manchester, the Rt Rev Nigel McCulloch, to ITV News.

"For a global manufacturer to re-create one of our great cathedrals with a photo-realistic quality and then encourage people to have gun battles in the building is beyond belief and highly irresponsible. Here in Manchester we do all we can to support communities through our parish clergy, we know the reality of gun crime and the devastating effects it can have on the lives – it is not a trivial matter.”

Sony has just released its first official comment on the blow-up. It said: “Sony Computer Entertainment Europe is aware of the concerns expressed by the Bishop of Manchester and the Cathedral authorities about the use of Manchester Cathedral in the game Resistance: Fall of Man, and we naturally take their concerns very seriously.”

The statement continued: “Resistance: Fall of Man is a fantasy science fiction game and is not based on reality. The game is set in an alternate and mythical version of Europe in the 1950s, in which the enemy are strange looking alien invaders seeking to destroy humanity. Whilst we believe that we have sought and received all permissions necessary for the creation of the game, we will be contacting the Cathedral authorities in order to better understand their concerns in more detail.”