An Iranian news channel mistakenly posts footage from Medal of Honor, confusing the in-game clip as an actual combat video from Hezbollah snipers.

Six years after Medal of Honor bombed out in the gaming industry's equivalent to the box office, the game has unexpectedly popped back up again. An Iranian news agency has accidentally posted some modified footage from Medal of Honor as an actual news item, evidently thinking the modified gameplay clip was actual combat footage.

The news outlet posted the video talking about active snipers in Syria, and claimed it was footage of Hezbollah snipers eliminating targets - and, apparently, getting headshot notifications whilst doing so.

The below video shows the extent of the footage, which is taken from the game's thermal scope gameplay segments. The video the news channel used has obviously been modified from its unmistakably video-game looking original state, and a stark maximization of the contrast ratio has limited detail to make it seem grainy and realistic, complete with someone using a handheld recorder over the screen.

Take a look at the news clip for your own judgment below:

[HTML1]

This isn't the first time video game footage has been mistaken for real life news, however. Three years ago a Danish news channel used a backdrop of Damascus from Assassin's Creed during their coverage of the Syrian conflict, and a Chinese military program once mistook The Chief's own armor from Halo as US military conceptual armor. As graphics continue to improve, it's getting easier and easier for the unaware to mistake gaming footage for the real deal, and we expect more of these incidents to crop up as time passes.

Once the above clip started to make waves, it was quickly debunked by a french news website called French24, who were quick to recognize that the HUD elements from the clip happened to match the Medal of Honor HUD perfectly. A quick trip to YouTube after that found some matching footage from the game itself, which seems to have dampened the argumentative spirit of most who thought the footage was real.

Some news readers then went on to attack the Iranian news agency itself, stating that the news developed the sham-footage internally in order to further a separate agenda. We won't delve any further into that, because we like to stick to video games as an alternative to actual international warfare propaganda accusations.

Medal of Honor ended up being a rather lackluster title when it was released in 2010, and a failed follow-up prompted the franchise to be removed from Electronic Arts' planned rotation entirely. Incidentally, the above glimpse of the game from the Iranian news channel will likely be the only look gamers have at the once-revered franchise for some time.

What do you think of the above footage, Ranters? Would you have thought it was real?

Source: PC Gamer