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Australian Target Stores Ban GTA V For Depictions of Violence Against Women
MojoKid writes "There's no such thing as an official Grand Theft Auto game until there's been a bit of controversy leading to its removal from at least one set of store shelves. It's a right of passage for the GTA series, if you will, and GTA V just earned its place among the franchise's previous titles by ruffling feathers in Australia, leading to its ousting from Target stores. At issue this time around is the "game's depictions of violence against women." Jim Cooper, general manager of corporate affairs for Target, explained that customers have voiced a "significant level of concern about the game's content." Separate reports say Target Australia received a petition with nearly 40,000 signatures demanding the game be removed. According to the petition, the game gives players plenty of "incentive is to commit sexual violence against women, then abuse or kill them to proceed or get 'health' points."
I note that this cheap media stunt was done over a year after it was released. I doubt the loss of sales is worth more than the free press they're getting.
Disgruntled GTA V fans have called upon Target to withdraw the Bible from sale, for exactly the same reason.
https://www.change.org/p/targe...
Summation 2
So in some of the GTA games you can hurt virtual women for a benefit of some sort.
Well what about the Hitman games, the ones with virtual women? What is the benefit of killing them? They don't give you anything other than maybe a useless item, and you sure as hell cannot take their clothing.
I've always wondered why you couldn't take their clothes but you can take all of the men's clothes.
Therefore, some of the Hitman games should be considered SEXIST and I want a refund. Or, at least let us take their clothing to strut around in.
Right of passage? Rite of passage!
But still for sale in US stores?
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Why only violence against women is unacceptable, when any type of violence should be unacceptable?
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
I haven't played GTA 5, but I've played all the others and this: "incentive is to commit sexual violence against women, then abuse or kill them to proceed or get 'health' points." is bullshit unless things have changed dramatically. Violence, yes. Plenty of violence, but the player never commits sexual violence. That would be thematically way out of line with the series. And you don't get 'health' points by abusing or killing women either. You can certainly rob them of their money... Is that supposed to be the same thing?
It would not be a problem, would it?
What are we going to censor today? Please make a selection:
1) Video games.
2) Movies.
3) Opinions.
4) Drawings.
5) Retro (back censoring things that aren't politically correct today).
So what will it be tomorrow? It's like we target popular items for "insert won't anyone think of the chil...feminists" reasons here. Any idiot out there with at least half a brain knows that violence in unacceptable whether it's children, females, shemales, hemales, dogs, cats, horses (insert your preference here). If you censor ONE thing in ONE media, you have to go for the other medias as well.
We're SO close to arresting people for thought crimes!
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Almost every year there is a big news story like this, regarding banning some game in Australia. Why are they so tight-assed about this topic, they otherwise seem quite relaxed people?
If they can stuff GTA* with whores, where are all the pimps to defend them? They can't ALL be pimpless.
And where is the option to employ or adopt the whores?
I have never played (or seen) any of the GTA series, however this did catch my eye...
"Jim Cooper, general manager of corporate affairs for Target, explained that customers have voiced a "significant level of concern about the game's content."
Whoah .... Hold the phone .... "customers" ?
If they really were or are customers then they bought the game. Can one then assume they returned it for a "no questions asked refund", which Target pretty much do in Oz. If not, then they were not "customers", but dare one suggest the "vocal minority" who do nothing but wreak havoc and mayhem while jumping on a band-wagon to push a cause without taking 2 seconds to look at what they are complaining about.
FWIW, I still have no interest in looking at any of the GTA series. If you ask me, from the title alone ...the puckers should have been locked up for the first one where they even suggested the concept of stealing some poor bastards car was a fun thing to do, and a bit of a game!
Fuckin so they should.
Has there ever been a GTA that didn't depict violence against women?
While I don't condone any violence (FWIW, I don't consider MMA, hunting etc. in that category), some people just don't understand the difference between role play/fantasy and the real world. I guess we should ban all rough sex, or civil war reenactments, oh and every James Bond movie, just to name a few.
Just another day in Paradise
Way to promote piracy.
...just breeds violent people I hold up the US as the prime example. Even the police there believe killing others makes them stronger.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
...The Road Warrior then.
I bet people can still buy that movie down under.
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We're waiting patiently for the video. Please bring it on, misrepresent another game for clicks. Misinterpret things for sport and profit. Extrapolate things which aren't there.
There quite a lot of violence against men in the game as well. Probably much more so than violence against women. Not too long ago, while I was playing Trevor, I was kidnapped by some guy who beat me up, drugged me, raped me in the ass and then left me naked and unconscious in the railroad tracks. So why isn't that a problem according to Target? Either Target is a bunch of sexist assholes or they believe women are fundamentally weak and in need of protection like this, which would make them ... o yeah. Sexist assholes.
By the way, I've never managed to really sexually assault a woman in the game. Is that even possible?
0x or or snor perron?!
Rock music. It's evil and corrupts young brains.
What, what do you mean, "50 years too late?"
....we slide.....
Debian rejects game due to authors opinion on women.
A properly licensed opensource casino video game was
recently posted to the debian bug tracker as a request
for packaging, as is the standard method for pursuing
such things in debian.
The bug was quickly closed, tagged as "won't fix"
The reason given by one of the debian developers
alluded to the authors past anti-feminist remarks:
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bi...
The piece of software in question is licensed
under the GPL and is one of the only of it's
kind for linux (ascii-art console slot machine software)
Is professing progressive politics now a hard requirement
for being allowed to contribute to free software projects?
Marry young girls (female children)
Allowed in the Old Testament (Deuteronomy 22 28-29)
Women had this banned because they can't compete.
If men had the choice they would chose the nice pretty sweet young girl,
over the fucking bitch who hates men.
And in the past they did.
why are all the WHORES women?
Studies that only count physical violence, and people who base their views of domestic violence on them, are a deep part of the problem.
The most painful scars are on the inside. Folks like you who only count physical violence as domestic abuse enable abusers by helping them convince themselves and those they abuse that as long they never physically hit then they arent committing abuse.
So fuck you very much.
(no gender references included because both sides of the fence agree on this)
Especially in Muslim communities. Because working to end that would be intolerant and also liable to cause people to rise up and kill other people too.
I'd like to know the answer to this as well.
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
For anyone getting angry at this decision, I think you're missing the real reason it was banned.
For some reason which I choose to ignore, some people were able to get 20'000 signatures on a petition. That's a lot of people.
Target's manager saw this as a potential hot potato, and decided it would just be easier to take it off the shelves instead of getting bad press and pressure. The game probably isn't selling as much anymore and it isn't a significant part of their revenue.
The backlash they would have gotten from NOT taking it off the shelves would have been worse than a couple of angry gamers.
So... are we going to ban the bible because it treats women like objects to be owned? Condones slavery? Tells people to kill other people for not worshiping the same god?
I bet if they came out with a game where you are an NSA agent snooping on other players to make them do things would be banned, too.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
The game doesn't keep stats on men versus women since the game, unlike the Target petition, is pretty gender neutral. However, I would say that playing the storyline would probably have about 98% of the violent acts against men. I've played the game to 100% completion, as well as several earlier editions, and there are very few women that you end up having to kill to progress. I never did the prostitute thing, so I don't know if you get health from having sex or not, but it is not violence if both sides agreed to a set price. It is violence to kill them afterwards, but you could do that to any random person on the street as well.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
This is code by someone who routinely trolls Debian. I doubt we want
any more poisonous upstreams in Debian, so I at least would prefer this
never get packaged.
I'm not sure where in that alludes to his anti-feminist remarks? It seems like he his a troll, although it isn't stated how or why.
Feminists are trying to censor video games. And I don't suppose it is a coincidence that the petition was about a game and an issue Sarkeesian focused on recently.
Violence against men is still okay, right?
Their line of logic is as follows:
Since men and women are equal, any measurement that shows any imbalance can only be attributed to society treating men and women differently. If we had a fair society, we would be seeing 50/50 splits across the board, so until we see this, we need to continue adjusting society.
It's obvious where the mistake is, it's good old Tabula Rasa again. If we want to end this kind of foolishness we need to push the debate towards their erroneous assumptions, instead of debating them on their own merits. Weather or not men are more violent than women, or women are more often victims of domestic abuse is irrelevant when these differences cannot be attributed to an unfair society. If it's not society's fault, then the assumption that this being a product of "patriarchy" is no longer valid, and 98% percent of their "evidence" is no longer admissible.
So graphic violence against men is acceptable?
Hopefully nobody notices that they still sell Lifetime specials and so forth in their TV section.
Maybe Romper Stomper and Mad Max got through on local cultural relevance.
StoneCypher is Full of BS
What the game depicts is the main character being violent against other characters who are in actuality nothing more than computer generated pixels with particular behavior traits associated with them. Any alleged violence against human beings occurs only in the mind of the player, and not in the game itself. Said computer generated pixels are no more women, or men, than a mannequin or dummy would be.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I agree, pretending that a company choosing to not sell an item in its stores is a form of censorship is likely to get you karma on Slashdot, despite being critically incorrect.
StoneCypher is Full of BS
The game invites players to commit homicidal violence against anything resembling an obstacle. You could argue there's sadistic violence against Stuff In Your Way, particularly in reference to the torture scene, but again this is against any opponent or human, not the (fictional) women. You could even commend the indifferent equality.
This is hype and PR, dressed up with whatever victim buzzwords are the flavor of the month. And anyone dropping Lovejoy's Law is an idiot; children can't buy the game, it got rated 18+ in AU. Call the game a Terrorist Trainer, it'll be less bullshit.
Violence Against Men: A-Ok, and usually to comedic effect!
I believe in the freedom for game creators to create whatever they want, it's their right, protected by the first amendment.
I believe in the freedom for store owners to refuse to sell whatever they want, it's their right, protected by the first amendment.
I believe in being consistent, and I lose respect for anyone who isn't, but it's their right, protected by the first amendment.
so violence against men is socially acceptable?
This is so stupid and wrongheaded on so many levels
The code for this game was not turned down only for the reason you state, the email submission came from a highly untrustworthy source in an anonymous format, and the code itself, (which is honestly the worst clusterfuck of inelegant coding this amatuer has ever reviewed,) contains blatantly anti-female texts ready to be displayed on screen should a user accidentally press the wrong key.
I might rail against the tide of femi-nutter fueled anti-male propaganda but i ain't supporting this shite either.
What happend to the body of people that review these things for sale??
isn't this an artifact in a long line of SONY blunderfucks?
sony pictures gets hacked,
wasnt there a GTA some time ago which was pulled off the shelves due to the racial slander twards the people of Haiti, and other various Polynesian individuals?
I mean seriously, its gotten to the point where SONY just doesnt care any more. It seems they try and try untill they get caught, wait a year or to and start the campaign again to "fuck" some one, some where, some how..
The Juggernaut that is SONY, which yes is still full of bologna.
Which would be better arguments against packaging the game then just saying the submitter has a history of 'trolling.'
I mean, I played THROUGH gta V and .. well. I don't remember where killing some bitches happened.
Perhaps they're confusing San Andreas with V. In San Andreas, hiring a prostitute would bring your health up a bit. Not so in V where, correct me if I'm wrong, it just takes your money. Certainly you can kill female NPCs in V, just as you can kill male NPCs, but there's no particular incentive to do so. That said, aside from the other points of sexism already noted, female NPCs, unlike male NPCs, will not fight back when you jack their car. Only rarely will a female NPC pedestrian will fight back. Or, perhaps that's realism rather than sexism?
*smack*
Ow, just asking...
-- sudon't
Air-ride Equipped
They've banned violent video games in the past. Phantasmagoria 1 and 2 were banned.
It's ok in the game to beat up people, shoot them, drive them over with trucks, use granades in the middle of the city and help the mafia.
But heaven help, should the game allow show that Mafia people actually beat women. Everybody knows that organized crime and human trafficking are completely independen and that truely, there are 'honourable' mafiosi which just shoot among themself, without earning money from such things.
That will really show it to them! LOL.
As if women would EVER stop dating violent men.
If MOST women wanted kind, caring, non-violent men, then that's exactly what MOST men would become - overnight.
If you can kill both men and women in a game, that means that there is no gender equality.
Killing men is OK. Killing women is not. I guess it's similar to the race equality where killing a white guy is OK, but killing a black guy is not (unless the player character is also a black guy).
Target Australia != Target America. They are two totally separate entities with no ties. Well, other than Target OZ's copycattedness.
Oh gee, let's drag this dead horse of a scapegoat and beat it some more.
I think Carmageddon got this right years ago. You are rewarded for running over men, women, old ladies, dogs, cattle, manager types, cops and of course wasting your opponents. An equal opportunities game I'd posit.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
Heh!
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
But violence against men is OK?
Some things are just not worth coding. Sexual violence and murder are some of them. Let's be clear here: society has spoken and this sort of behaviour is definitively not tolerated. If you don't believe me, just start posting on your Facebook page that you have done those things in real life and wait for the response.
The saddest thing is that there is a market for this kind of depravity. Are there really that many people out there who would do these sorts of things if there was not law to stop them?
You can try to call it satire, but it really isn't. It is a choice allowed by the code of a game with a reward mechanism attached that reinforces the choice. Positive feedback for virtual performance of a depraved act. There is nothing satirical about that. Sad != satirical. Perhaps if Americans actually understood satire they could tell the difference between Swift and Rockstar.
I'll give it a go to see if some of you can understand: Swift, in his Modest Proposal used hyperbole (exaggeration) and litotes (belittling) to underscore the plight of the starving Irish. Measures employed by the English parliament were doing more harm than good, so to highlight their abuse he suggested something so abhorrent that nobody could misunderstand the atrocity, and then juxtaposed it (placed it side by side) with their current policy. He suggested that there really wasn't much of a gap between them. It produced outrage (like GTA 5), and eventually positive change (unlike any GTA game).
Let us now contrast GTA5: Firstly there is no direct objective to inform, the objective is to make money by selling units of the game. It is exploiting controversy as a marketing ploy. To this end it aims to build into the game something that will enrage the public. It used to be "merely" porn, but since that has now become passé they have moved on (as do many drug addicts) to harder stuff. There is no social statement since the actions are merely allowed, not required. There is no reflected subject it is critiquing or juxtaposing. There is merely the lack of negative consequences to the player for doing what would hold grave consequence in real life. Rather than attempting to induce outrage by those consuming the media, it is encouraging those negative behaviours such that the outrage is mainly by those who do not experience the game first hand. Thus it is inciting, not insightful.
GTA5 fails to be satirical by failing to contain any satirical device: Hyperbole, Litotes, Parody, Irony, Sarcasm, or Juxtaposition.
The only satirical thing about GTA 5 is the irony that those who have the most to do with the game least understand it, since they justify the game as satire which it clearly isn't! (oh, and the game is appealing to some people because it is abhorrent - but that may just reflect the depravity of those individuals which isn't ironic at all).
The sad indictment on society that the defenders of the game claim makes the game satirical is not found within the game itself, but is rather that some people actually buy it knowing of its deplorable disposition. A point not made in the game, but by media reporting on it.