Controversy strikes as the Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War teaser trailer gets banned in China. The debut trailer quickly received a worldwide edit removing a controversial one second segment of footage. Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War's new teaser trailer removed the footage across all platforms, including countries where the footage is not considered controversial.
The trailer originally ran for 2:02 seconds and was released to the world after a complicated series of Call of Duty and history themed puzzles. The trailer was posted to the official Call of Duty YouTube channel.
The edit happened fairly quickly and replaced all official Xbox and Call of Duty versions with a much shorter 1:00 trailer. Rather then a new teaser, this video has replaced the original 2:02 version with the original being marked as private. Although most fans did not notice the switch, many news sites in China did. The original footage was blocked fairly quickly as a large segment of fans noticed that Tiananmen Square footage was involved in the promotion. The controversial segment can be seen clearly at 1:05 mixed among a montage of various historical clips of civil unrest during the Cold War time period. The clip in question shows a famous clip of students attacking an armored vehicle in China.
In China, this degree of censorship is not uncommon when it comes to footage of the Tiananamen Square incident. The CCP strictly controls foreign media and censorship of controversial themes is a part of doing business in China. The problem that fans have with the decision revolves around the changing of everyone's trailer. Although the original video can still be found on other sites, the official trailer is now the edited down version.
Call of Duty: Black Ops is not a stranger to Chinese censorship, as in 2018, Black Ops 2 was banned after government officials discovered a bombing of a Chinese city within the title. Anything that could be considered dangerous to the Chinese government, fictional or not, quickly sees a ban from the CCP for the protection of their government and citizens.
Many fans do not disagree with the censorship in China, but wonder if the video could simply have been replaced in China only. Replacing the entire video for all audiences based on the preference of one country's censor seems like a large reaction to a minor problem. Fans hope that Chinese censorship will not affect the final version of the next trailer when it debuts in the next few days.
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is being developed by Treyarch and Raven Software.