Final Fantasy 16 has been banned in Saudi Arabia
Final Fantasy 16 has been banned in Saudi Arabia, its official ratings board has confirmed.
In a post on the official Twitter account for its video game division on Wednesday, the General Commission for Audiovisual Media stated that the game had not been cleared for release in the country.
According to the message, the game has been banned because it contains unacceptable content that Square Enix refused to change.
“For fans of Final Fantasy 16, we would like to clarify that it has not been released in the Kingdom, due to the publisher’s unwillingness to make the necessary modifications,” the tweet reads.
Earlier in the week, the board’s general supervisor for video games, Hattan Tawili, had tweeted about the situation without explicitly naming the game.
“Unfortunately, after all our attempts over the past eight months without any success, one of the most important and biggest games of the year is on its way to being banned due to the company’s complete refusal to modify the content to suit the region,” he wrote.
“Of course, it is clear to the company what happened, but they put it in abundance without reason and refuse to modify it.”
It’s not clear exactly which content in the game caused it to be banned, but in February, on the same day a preview embargo for the game was lifted, three writers for Saudi website TrueGamingposted vague tweets implying an upcoming game had LGBTQ+ content. If they were referring to Final Fantasy 16, this would certainly be considered a cause to ban the game in the region.
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The ban arrives as Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) continues to make a series of investments in the video games industry.
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