Three months after it debuted on YouTube, a Call of Duty commercial selling Black Ops 7 has been banned within the UK for “alluding to non-consensual penetration.”
The next incorporates descriptions of the commercial in query that some readers could discover upsetting.
The Promoting Requirements Authority (ASA), the UK’s promoting regulator, issued the ban on February 16. In its ruling, the company discovered that after cautious assessment, the advert “generated humor by the humiliation and implied menace of painful, non-consensual penetration of the person, an act related to sexual violence.” The ASA continued, saying, “As a result of the advert alluded to non-consensual penetration, and framed it as an entertaining situation, we thought of that the advert trivialised sexual violence and was due to this fact irresponsible and offensive.”
The advert was posted to the official Call of Duty YouTube channel on November 6, 2025. Titled “The Replacer ‘Airport Safety,'” the advert sees two airport safety brokers “changing” individuals who determined to remain at residence and play the brand new Call of Duty: Black Ops 7. (Since you want the total recreation title in there.) A man will get “randomly chosen to be manhandled” after getting his watch confiscated, and one of many brokers calls for he take away all his garments as a result of the opposite, with latex gloves on, is “getting in dry.” There is a tablet bottle; the man will get advised to “chew down” on the baton. You’ll be able to guess how this goes.
Since its YouTube debut, the commercial has additionally appeared on on-demand providers operated by Channel 5 and ITV. On the time, based on the ASA’s new ruling, Clearcast authorized the advert. The group, which opinions commercials for broadcasting within the UK, gave it an “ex-kids” timing restriction, which blocked it from showing throughout or round kids’s programming or something meant for youthful audiences.
The ASA and Clearcast each understood that the advert contained exaggerated humor, stating it depicted a “intentionally implausible, parodic situation that bore no resemblance to actual airport safety procedures.” Nonetheless, after receiving 9 totally different complaints concerning the acts depicted within the advert, the ASA has pulled it, saying it mustn’t ever seem within the UK once more in its present type.
When reached for remark, Activision Blizzard pointed GameSpot to the response it gave to the ASA in its new ruling. The corporate mentioned that the advert was “focused at grownup audiences solely, who had the next tolerance for irreverent or exaggerated humour.” It additionally denied any sexual innuendo or sexual violence within the advert, saying it “didn’t sexualise the act of performing searches and contained no implication that the acts have been sexual” in any respect.
“The ‘chew down’ line referred to discomfort fairly than intercourse, and that the individual remained clothed and in the identical checkpoint setting, which they mentioned underlined that no strip search or nudity occurred,” Activision Blizzard mentioned. “[E]ven if some viewers inferred innuendo, the advert contained no express content material or objectifying imagery. [T]he searched particular person appeared bewildered fairly than distressed, supporting a comedic tone fairly than hurt or abuse. [T]he advert didn’t depict sexual violence or an invasive strip search, and there was no indication the characters gained sexual gratification. [T]he ‘Replacers’ have been depicted as absurd caricatures whose incompetence and inappropriateness have been the premise of the humour, not function fashions.”
In consequence, the ASA concluded that Call of Duty commercials from Activision Blizzard going ahead should be ” socially accountable and [do] not trigger severe offence, for instance by trivialising sexual violence.”