Religious figures are interesting playthings. Oh, no one cares when a chain-wielding spartan tears holes through the Greek gods, or mystical figures are caught and bound like pokemon to fight for their high-school trainers. Then you go and put the deities of a popular and active religion in a halter top and g-string and send them out to fight one another, and suddenly people are all concerned. The game is called Smite, and it’s all about the battle of the gods. Not as abstract entities, but in the more immediate X-button-throws-lightning player character sense. In particular, Hindu groups have protested the game’s use of the goddess Kali. IGN has the story.
The most amusing comments I’ve seen are the ones complaining about Kali’s skimpy outfit. If you aren’t familiar, Kali is normally depicted entirely naked except for the coating of fresh blood, and the belts she wears. The belts are strung through her collection of trophies showing how many men she’s killed, and those trophies aren’t ears. What you see in the game? That’s formal Kali, wedding guest Kali, Kali at the Republican National Convention. There’s not even one decapitated corpse spraying blood for her to drink as if a fountain.