Future Publishing has found itself having to remove images of a headless goat from 80,000 copies of its official PlayStation magazine after they were described as “depraved” by the Mail on Sunday.

The offending images are of a headless goat, the carcass of which was used in a press event for God of War II.

It is little surprise that the Mail on Sunday, a conservative, self-appointed moral guardian, picked up on the event and railed against it.

Animal welfare activists also commented on it with The International Fund for Animal Welfare branding it "stupid and completely unjustified".

Future and Sony agreed together to pull the images from the coming issue.

"It was a joint decision to remove the offending pages across the print run", said Future.

"But the copies for subscribers have already been sent out so we can't recall them."

Meanwhile, Sony have been limiting the damage and a spokesman has been keen to sooth the waters.

"Whilst we pride ourselves on creating engaging experiences we are committed to making sure these are appropriate in nature and do not cause offense to either attendees or our consumers in general."

"We are conducting an internal inquiry into aspects of the event in order to learn from the occurrence and put into place measures to ensure that this does not happen again."