Bully Banned by Some British Retailers

stormhair writes "The BBC is reporting that shops in the DSG Group (Currys and PC World) are banning Bully from their shelves. A spokesman says: 'We took a view that because it touches on a sensitive issue — violence in school — that it is not a product we would stock.' DSG has withdrawn other games from their shelves in the past — Hitman and Manhunt."

Comments

No biggie

[Pharmboy]

Sounds like they are trying to be responsible retailers, according to their own reasonable definitions. Every store should have the right (and does in most places) to stock what games or products it wants, and if they think a title is not good for their customers, they don't stock it. Not sure why this is news.

I am sure some will scream "censorship!", which is of course silly, and only the government can censor. I call this "setting standards for what products you carry". If you really want Bully, I am sure there are plenty of other places that sell it.

PC World and Currys...

[LighterShadeOfBlack]

Just to clarify, PC World and Currys are NOT major games retailers, Currys is an electrical goods store and PC World is primarily for PC hardware. This isn't much of a blow to Rockstar at all.

Banned? Too strong a word.

[Half-pint HAL]

Do specialist Heavy-Metal music shops "ban" classical music? No, they just choose not to stock it.

Why? Because they don't think their intended audience want to see it in the shop.

That's all DSG are doing: choosing their stock to suit their market.

HAL

Re:There will always be a few

[thatguywhoiam]

I am still curious about Bully, is it realy about school violence? To me getting into a fist fight isn't school violence. School violence involves knives, guns, and sever beatings... Are there any reviews out there on the game yet? or moreo n what the game is HONESTLY like? All I have seen are the numerous articles about that idiot attacking the game, and nothing about what the game is really like.

I can tell you what its really like. Played for hours last night.

First off: it is basically GTA meets Harry Potter. But the violence is nowhere near what GTA was; for instance, nobody ever dies, you can't kill people (near as I can tell). And I didn't see any blood.

What you will see is your protagonist hoodlum kid - who is not particularly likeable - immediately set upon by one of the myriad other cliques in the school (jocks, preps, etc). And yes, they sometimes come at you sporting planks of wood or bricks or slingshots.

And you beat the living crap out of them.

Now, I will leave it as an exercise to the reader if this goes beyond the bounds of 'acceptable' entertainment. I thought it was a blast. It is basically your standard male revenge-fantasy, put into a GTA-like sandbox setting with a lot of crisscrossing plot points that you can pick up and put down at will.

Getting into fights will get you busted by overpowering 'prefects' who are essentially the cops of the game. You 'wake up' at the Principal's Office, or the infimary, etc. when this happens. If you get away, you get away. The only thing you can do to the prefects is a fast kick in the nuts, and then you hoof it out of there (or into a locker, or trash can; many shades of Metal Gear in this part of the game - particularly the hiding in lockers part).

If you attack a girl, she instantly neuters you and runs away at light speed. Then the prefects nab you.

So - its not like Columbine, even remotely. No firearms. No trenchcoats. In the standard Rockstar style, they try to obviate the lighter moral questions by making sure that practically every character in the game is an utter bastard in some respect or another. The prefects are assholes. The nerds are assholes (they can't fight but have other tricks). The teachers are assholes. Everyone is an asshole, including you.

(I tried playing the game initally as a sort of 'noble Bully' and you can do that - but quickly you realise that you are just helping another faction.)

So in the end, the controversy is that kids beat each other up in this game and play mean pranks. That's it. It's rated T for Teen in Canada, and that is a fair rating in my opinion.