It seems that EA games made a bit of a mistake in their recent FIFA 2008 game. They kind of, sort of insulted about 60% of the population of Northern Ireland by playing the national anthem of the Republic of Ireland (The Soldiers Song, heavily associated with violent republicanism in the north) instead of the more politically correct (but equally devisive) God Save the Queen. Now for those of you who are not completely familiar with the situation here in Ireland, we've basically just finally achieved peace in the North after over 50 years of violence. The last thing we need is to give them an excuse to go at it again!

Some of you might be wondering how this could possibly start a conflict, but let me just tell you, in Northern Ireland, people have been shot and killed for less. Back in the 80's, believe it or not but Belfast was basically as bad as Baghdad is now. Bombs were going off in the streets and people were being killed for looking the wrong way at a policeman. Even as recently as last year, there were still stories surfacing of people being kidnapped by IRA splinter groups and being forced to carry bombs.

Of course the lads in Sinn Fein (they're in government, power sharing with the unionists) and the IRA are probably laughing their arses off about it, as are all of us down here in the south, but those angry Unionists can get pretty hot and heavy about their "rights" (despite 70 years of denying rights to everyone else... I'm just sayin...) and apparently demanded an apology.
Thankfully, EA were pretty straight out about it:

"At EA Sports, we pride ourselves on delivering rich and authentic videogame experiences," said EA's Shaun White. "We sincerely apologise for this error."

In fairness, the Minister for Sports was fairly understanding too and just let it slide as a bit of innocent ignorance on the part of EA. War has been averted once again, thanks to a Video Games developer.

Source: GameIndustry.biz