One of the dungeon rooms in the game features children locked in jail cells. The player can free the children by pushing on a spot in the wall, but upon being freed, they will attack the player. Series creator Richard Garriott created this room in an effort to involve players emotionally and psychologically in the gameplay by posing a situation where they alone would have to think and decide whether or not to slaughter children. While killing the children is the easiest way to get out of that room, there are multiple methods to spare the children, such as using the Charm or Sleep spells. The game offers no punishment or reward for sparing or killing them, and since this event had no impact on the rest of the game, Garriott did not care how players resolved it.

This room would spark internal controversy when a religious fundamentalist playtester working at Origin Systems' New Hampshire division discovered the room and became outraged, believing the company was promoting child abuse. Instead of contacting Richard Garriott, he wrote a letter to Richard's brother Robert outlining his grievances with it and his resignation from the company, which led to Robert and his parents arguing with Richard over the phone to remove the room from the game. He defended the room by pointing out that players were not guaranteed to see it out of the 256 individual rooms in the game, that they did not have to free the children in the first place, and that they could spare them and did not have to kill them to either escape the room or win the game. He argued that his family and the playtester were trying to censor what he could do artistically while misunderstanding that the room was not meant to be explicitly offensive, and in the end, the room remained in the final game.