Sony Censors Queer Storyline in Marvel’s Wolverine in the Middle East

In the recently released blockbuster video game “Marvel’s Wolverine,” reports indicate that queer content was specifically censored in certain world regions. The edits affect references to a marriage between two female characters. The changes were observed mainly in versions intended for the Middle East. In countries such as Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates (UAE), homosexuality can carry severe prison terms or even the death penalty.

As posts on platforms like Reddit and X—documented, according to the gaming site Kotaku, the edits center on the relationship between the characters Mystique and Tyger: a wedding photo that players can encounter in a locker is blurred or pixelated in the affected editions. When one of the two characters uses terms like “wife” or speaks of love, the audio cuts out at that point. The corresponding words in the on-screen text are obscured with asterisks.

It’s not the first time a game developed by Insomniac Games and distributed by Sony has faced censorship of queer plotlines. Previously, in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, rainbow flags were removed for the Middle East market, or a side mission featuring Miles Morales helping a gay student was removed.

Queer activists criticize the censorship as hypocritical: the lucrative Western market is courted with Pride messages to flaunt progressive representation, while publishers can still profit in queer-hostile countries by censoring content.

Some companies, however, refuse to tailor their games to the constraints of local markets. “Final Fantasy XVI” was banned in Saudi Arabia in May 2023 after the publisher Square Enix declined to implement the requested content adjustments. The dispute centered on the relationship between the character Dion Lesage and his loyal companion Terence, who share a brief kiss in one scene.