Former Kansas City Chiefs running back Kareem Hunt has been booted from the Madden NFL 19 video game, the game’s maker said Wednesday.
The star running back was cut by the Chiefs last week after a video surfaced showing him pushing and kicking a woman. The NFL and law enforcement are investigating the issue, the Chiefs tweeted on Friday.
Hunt, the 2017 NFL rushing leader and a key player on the Madden NFL 19 roster, will be replaced by a generic player with similar statistics, according to EA Sports.
“The updates have fully gone through now so Hunt has been removed from the game and players who were using him for Ultimate Team have their replacement player,” Brad Hilderbrand, an EA Sports spokesperson, said via email.
The ratings and attributes are the same, so players shouldn’t notice any impact on on-field performance, according to Hilderbrand.
The video of Hunt, which first surfaced Friday via the website TMZ, is from February and shows Hunt shoving the woman several times in a Cleveland hotel hallway while people try to hold him back. At one point, the woman appears to stumble, and as she attempts to get up, Hunt kicks her back down.
No arrests were made as a result of the incident and Hunt, 23, has not been charged.
“I’m asking for forgiveness and I definitely believe I deserve forgiveness,” Hunt told ESPN this week. “Everything is really happening fast right now, and I just want everybody to forgive me.
Hunt said: “I know it’s going to be hard. I made a bad choice and I’m not going to let this bring me down.”
According to Hilderbrand, EA Sports previously removed former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice from the game’s roster after his domestic violence arrest in 2014.
“Ray Rice is probably the closest analog as that incident happened during the season as well,” Hilderbrand said in an email.
Rice was arrested and charged with assault after being accused of striking his then-fiancée and knocking her unconscious in a New Jersey hotel. He pleaded not guilty and agreed to a pretrial intervention program that would allow the charges to be dismissed.
