In an attempt to make its latest Medal of Honor unrivalled in realism in the first-person shooter stakes, EA Games has purportedly landed seven US Navy SEALs who consulted on the game in hot water. The U.S. Navy’s principal spec-ops forces, the SEALs have most recently been famed for the finding and killing of Osama Bin Laden.

But underlying the Navy SEALs operation is an apparent ‘unwritten code of silence’ that forbids anyone involved with its operations to reveal its secrets, and that’s something which the seven members of SEAL Team 6 have broken in being paid as ‘consultants’ by EA during the development of Medal of Honor: Warfighter, in which they gave up classified information provided to them by the Navy. So the game does not attempt to re-create the lead-up operations, nor raid, on Bin Laden’s compound; but EA has played up the game’s realism time and again in the lead up to release, and it’s this connection that has allowed the game’s developers to take advantage.

For their troubles, the Navy has taken away the seven named Navy SEALs’ pay for two months, and have had a letter of reprimand added to their records, effectively black-listing them from career progression.

There is a slight sense of injustice, however. Despite that same unwritten code, SEALs have been involved with media productions in the past, with the Navy itself approving such collaboration. The film Act of Valour for one started as a recruiting film, and boasts the names of eight active-duty Navy SEALs. SEAL Team Six, meanwhile, will be featured in two up and coming movies: one being the raid and eventual killing of Bin Laden.

Harvey McDaniel