Banned in China: Thinking of picking up Playground of Destruction in the Koreas or World in Flames in Venezuela? Don't bother.
Both games make efforts to avoid offending their targets, but it wasn't really enough; particularly when a cheat code allows for Han Solo to run around North Korea, blowing up temples and monuments. Both games caught flak from western game reviewers for this reason, such as EGM in 2005.
In the case of South Korea, it is not so much about taking offense as it is about political tension: The Koreas are still technically in a state of war, so any media without a strong historical basis which portrays them fighting is just too risky to allow, even if South Korea itself is portrayed as the good guys. Particularly when the game developers used to sell training sims to the U.S. military, something both North Korea and Venezuela were very quick to point out when denouncing the games, with some Venezuelan leaders even going so far as to accuse Pandemic and EA of attempting to train kids into soldiers themselves!
Venezuela went even further than just banning the game: Hugo Chavez, who mistakenly believed that it was about assassinating him, denounced all video games as "poison" on his live TV show. His party would use the game as an excuse to criminalize the sale of "video games about war and killing", a ban that still exists to this day.
Screwed by the Network: World in Flames was one of many games that suffered under EA's need for constant releases and was released in a very unpolished state as a result which really hurt its commercial and critical reception.
