DICE has confirmed that Battlefield 3 players won't be able to shoot civilians.

Speaking to RockPaperShotgun, executive producer, Patrick Bach, said the decision was made because the studio didn't want the game to become the subject of controversy.

Bach said: "If you put the player in front of a choice where they can do good things or bad things, they will do bad things, go dark side - because people think it's cool to be naughty, they won't be caught.

"In a game where it's more authentic, when you have a gun in your hand and a child in front of you what would happen? Well the player would probably shoot that child. We would be the ones to be blamed. We have to build our experiences so we don't put the player in experiences where they can do bad things.

"Me personally, I'm trying to stay away from civilians in games like BF because I think people will do bad. I don't want to see videos on the internet where people shoot civilians. That's something I will sanitise by removing that feature from the game.

"We are trying to do something that is more mature. Mature not being gore - some people confuse the two. That's childish actually, to want more blood."

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