"We're sorry that we offended people - that was truly not the intention of the trailer," he said, asked if IO understood what it was about the Attack of the Saints trailer that left a sour taste.

Of course we understand, this has been a very big topic for us and we’ve been reading as much as we could of the articles and responses. We were surprised that it turned into such a huge topic. Something similar happened with our Sniper Challenge pre-order bonus... We just wanted to make something cool, it wasn’t the intention to stir up anything."

Some commentators had suggested that the trailer was in itself a marketing ploy designed to attract attention, something that Blystad strongly denies. "It really came as a big surprise to us how it all went down," he said. "It was never the intention to provoke people with it."