Editing Appearance or Clothing of Video Game Images

18-3-2020 | IslamWeb

Question:

Salaam dear brother. Please can you explain to me what the ruling is if you are given a default character in a video game, but you want to edit their appearance or clothing. Does thins come under the heading of haram image making or imitating the creation of Allah. Please see the link so you understand what I am talking about https://youtu.be/U_fc2rPES_g

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Answer:

All perfect praise be to Allah, The Lord of the Worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allah, and that Muhammad, is His slave and Messenger.

We apologize for not opening the attached link, following the website's policy regarding links attached to questions.

Anyway, if editing the images in these games means that the players would choose a character from a variety of ready-made characters to play with in the game, then this appears to be permissible and the ruling on drawing images of animate beings does not apply to this case. This is because the player does not exert effort towards creating the image or professionally draw and enhance the character.

This is contrary to drawing and editing images via Photoshop and similar programs, which, in our view, fall into the category of drawing animate beings, and it is permissible if the image is incomplete, such as the case when the editing is done on the image of a head only, for example. However, if the image is complete, it is impermissible.

Allah Knows best.