Capcom tweaks Street Fighter 5 Thailand stage due to "unintentional religious references"

Capcom was forced to pull Street Fighter 5's recently-released Thailand stage from sale over what it called "unintentional religious references".

The stage, a remaster of M. Bison's iconic Buddhist temple stage from Street Fighter 2, was removed from sale on Steam and the PlayStation Store yesterday - to the surprise of players. The Street Fighter 5 community suspected the move was due to what sounded like Islamic chanting in the background music track.

You can hear the original in the video, below.

Capcom later issued a statement to say it would remove the music and replace it with music from another stage. Here's the statement:

Following maintenance, the substitute BGM on the Thailand temple stage is currently M. Bison's Street Fighter 5 theme.

Capcom isn't the first video game company to make this kind of cultural error. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time featured the same sample track as part of the score for the Fire Temple level. Nintendo cut the music for Ocarina's second printing.

And back in 2008, Sony delayed LittleBigPlanet in Europe because of the inclusion of a song that borrowed some versus from the Qu'ran. Sony ended up recalling the game from shops worldwide.