LittleBigPlanet could be delayed due to Quran quotes

It seems there could be a crisis at Sony right now all because of LittleBigPlanet. Yesterday we inquired with the publisher about a possible delay after seeing the likes of Zavvi and Asda post new dates on their sites. However, we were quickly told that the game was still on track for its October 24 date, and were happy to report that fact.

But now it seems rumours are raging up once again, with the likes of CVG, GI.biz, and others all saying the game will now suffer a delay. No one seems to know why though.

So what could cause a company to delay a game at the last possible second? Well, if this thread, which has been cached on the PlayStation Europe forums is anything to go by, then offending religions would be high up on the list.

If the thread contains the correct info, then a song in the game contains words from the Quran sung in Arabic. And seeing that people of Muslim faith consider the mixing of music and words from the Quran deeply offensive Sony could have taken the step of delaying LBP remove that track from the game. Obviously, it is possible Sony could release a patch to remove the words, but it is also possible they opted to take a much more drastic step.

In the past the likes of Capcom’s Zack & Wiki and Activision’s Call of Duty 4 were found to have similar content in their games, but were noticed and removed at a much earlier point in the development cycle. However, with LBP already printed, and with some stores already breaking street dates to sell it, this would be very much a last minute move by Sony.

If this news turns out to be true, then this would not only cause a delay in Europe, as the game would probably get pushed back worldwide… possibly to the November 14th date that keeps popping up everywhere recently.

We have contacted Sony for more info, but we have got no reply from them as of yet. We really hope this is still just one big mess-up, and the game will hit Oct 24th like it is supposed to. However, with all this smoke there could very well be a fire at the center.