Activision said Friday it will remove real-life footage of the deadly 2022 Itaewon crowd crush from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 after an outcry from bereaved families and civic groups in South Korea.

According to NBC News, the publisher apologized and said the footage would be completely removed through a game update scheduled for November 12.

The game's opening cinematic uses about ten seconds of heavily edited real news footage — including a figure performing CPR and rows of bodies laid out in the street — to illustrate a fictional North Korean invasion, without referring to the Itaewon disaster directly.

The Itaewon Disaster Bereaved Families Association and the Itaewon Disaster Citizens' Countermeasures Committee said in a joint statement they were appalled that scenes of citizens performing CPR while victims lay on the cold street were used 'exactly as they were' in the game, and demanded the clip be removed, per The Guardian.

Lee Mi Hyun, a director at the citizens' committee, told NBC News the game turns the suffering of real people into entertainment with 'absolutely no empathy.'

Nearly 160 people died in the crush in Seoul's Itaewon nightlife district during the 2022 Halloween weekend, and the outcry came as the country marked the fourth anniversary of the disaster.

Players in South Korea identified the clip shortly after the game's release, and Korean broadcasters compared it side by side with footage filmed on the night of the crush, The Guardian reports; the Korean Game Users Association called for an apology and replacement of the footage.

According to NBC News, Activision said in its statement that 'in using actual news footage in the game, we never intended to evoke any tragic incident, including the Itaewon disaster, or to trivialize the suffering associated with such tragedies.'

Lee Jin Woo, whose sister died in the crush, told NBC News he felt 'betrayed as a gamer' once he recognized the footage.

The controversy lands on a game that NBC News reports is the top-selling title on Steam in both South Korea and the United States, with its hyperrealistic portrayal of a North Korean invasion already a political talking point in Seoul.

Opposition figures have urged President Lee Jae Myung to play the game to grasp the Pyongyang threat, while ruling-party lawmaker Kim Han Kyu defended it, asking why games should not depict a war against North Korea.

The episode also poses a broader question for a franchise leaning on real-world authenticity: how far realism can go before real tragedy becomes entertainment.