Six Days in Fallujah’s creators are ready to release and defend the controversial shooter

polygon.com:

In 2009, Six Days in Fallujah, a video game based on real urban combat between American Marines and Iraqis between April and May of 2004, was canceled. The shooter had withered under negative media attention, eventually losing the support of its publisher.

Now, more than a decade later, Six Days in Fallujah is back under the banner of first-time publisher Victura — and so is the controversy. But in the intervening years, the tenor and scope of the debate around it has changed considerably. In 2009, the game’s most vocal critics were upset by the idea of representing a still-raw historical moment in a video game. Today’s critiques, by contrast, revolve around a decade of revelations about the specifics of that historical moment and whether Six Days can fairly represent both sides.

Based on public dissent of the Iraq war, Victura president Peter Tamte quickly found himself in a media crossfire after a 2021 Polygon interview sparked social media responses, including from those who served in Fallujah. Tamte’s responses noted the team was “not trying to make a political statement” with its work on Six Days, and he defended the decision not to address the war crimes attributed to U.S. troops in the game. The debates concerned whether Six Days can ever convey battlefield experiences accurately enough, or if the game’s surrounding circumstances, like the impact on Muslim civilians, are sufficiently accounted for in a genre known for a nationalist focus. A U.S.-based Arab advocacy group called on platform makers not to accept Six Days and denounced the game as an “Arab murder simulator that will only normalize violence against Muslims in America and around the world.”

To that, Tamte is primed to defend Six Days after early