The Entertainment Software Rating Board has rescinded their rating for GTA:SA and is advising retailers to stop selling it. Take-Two, Rockstar's parent company, has stopped production of the game until it can produce a non-"Hot Coffee" version, and it may start disappearing from store shelves by the end of the day. The overblown witchhunt seemed comical until it began to succeed...
Rockstar to release Bully gamePouring hot coffee onBy Aaron McKenna: Tuesday 02 August 2005, 07:24SOMEBODY really ought to copy Rockstar and Take Two a memo on digging holes. With the fallout from Hot Coffeegate still landing half the industry up to its neck in crap they’re pushing ahead with a videogame entitled simply "Bully".Rockstar Games describes the upcoming title as one where gamers play a "troublesome schoolboy" who "stands up to bullies, gets picked on by teachers, plays pranks on malicious kids, wins or loses the girl, and ultimately learns to navigate the obstacles of the fictitious reform school."Alright, so the pitch does have you playing the anti-bully-turned-bully, but really chaps you could have been more sensitive. The schools bullying watchdog, Bullying Online, here, has come out with strong statements against the game with the organisation's Liz Carnell telling the press: "This game should be banned. I'm extremely worried that kids will play it and then act out what they've seen in the classroom....Bullying is not a game by any stretch of the imagination. We have around four suicidal children contacting us every day." According to the organisation two million children in the UK are "bullied" in real-life school settings each year.
Grand Theft Auto player gets death penaltyThe price of not being under the influenceBy Nick Farrell: Friday 12 August 2005, 14:37TEEN MURDERERr Devin Moore was sentenced to death yesterday for killing three police officers as he tried to escape from custody.While in the history of US criminal law there is nothing unusual about this, Moore’s case has attracted a lot of attention because he claimed to be under the influence of the violent game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. In fact he seemed to have been inventing this alibi the moment he was caught saying the words “Life is a video game, you have to die sometime.”Ironically, Moore’s defence is backed by the families of those people he killed. They are currently trying to sue the makers and distributors of the game, Rock Star saying it was somehow involved in the murders.While the families welcomed the verdict yesterday, it actually will cause problems for their case that GTA is a murder simulator that inspired the young Moore to kill.If Moore was under the influence of GTA, then he must be seen as mentally defective and therefore require treatment rather than the death penalty. It does not seem that the jury bought this concept, in fact they only took an hour to make up their minds of his guilt, which legal terms is about the length of time it took to sit down and vote on it.It is clear that they saw the deaths of Police Officer Strickland, Officer Crump, and Dispatcher Mealer as the act of a desperate kid who knew what he was doing and why.According to a statement from the families they are not saying that Moore was not responsible for what he did. They say that there is a lot of blame to go around. This is why they are suing Sony, Take-Two/Rockstar, Wal-Mart, and GameStop.A cynic would think that the question is who should pay for the deaths of these three. Moore is going to be killed by the State, he can’t really pay much more and these companies seem to have enough money.While a court is usually incredibly sympathetic to families in such cases, there are long histories of similar cases that have gone belly up. The case of the teen that shot himself after listening to Judas Priest because of what his family claimed were subliminal messages to “do it” played backwards, springs to mind. However if, as the family says, the issue is one of blame then why must it fall on the door of the makers of a game the bloke played.What about his family? The jury heard how Moore had been abused as a child. What were the other elements that made up his upbringing? Social services, who failed to spot the guy was about to go over the edge. What about the police station that allows loaded firearms to be carried around while people are being interviewed?It seems that if blame for creating a teen mass-murderer has to be shared by anyone, it is not just those who made up the game. It seems that the families have gone for a media byte-sized target?Is it so impossible to believe that a kid, with a history of abuse, who is arrested on suspicion of nicking a car, will not snap?
