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."

Comments

Removed after Initial sales spike

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Removed after Initial sales spike

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't the same controversy. If you haven't been paying attention (and can't blame you if you haven't) there's a new wave of Jack Thompsons. It's not a think-of-the-children thing, it's accusations of racism and misogyny. Basically, same shit, different idiots from opposite ends of the political spectrum. Instead of wacky conservatives, now its loony pseudo-feminists ranting about how video games (which they totally play, but don't) are this that and the other thing, gamers are bad (seriously), pay attention to me, ect. Only when I called Jack Thompson a dumb asshole, no one cared, but now pointing out the poor arguments and outright lies of these new assholes gets you accused of being misogynist. To b honest I'd rather deal with ol' Jack was though; these new people are downright toxic, and causing all sorts of drama everywhere they go, and more seriously, making light of actual social issues. Lots of people are really getting the wrong idea of what feminism really means thanks to these boneheads who define feminism as 'that thing I can use as a cudgel for my own selfish agenda.'

Anyway, yes, GTA and apparently video games in general for that matter are still controversial, and really, while the justifications have changed, the real root reason is still the same: pompous, self righteous, holier than thou busybodies who really need to find another claim to fame and leave the rest of us the fuck alone.

Meanwhile

[Rik Sweeney]

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...

Re:Meanwhile

[Tom]

The above is a fantastic example of just how arbitrary our ethics are. It's not just the bible - things ten times worse than what any game or movie show happen in real life and we accept them as "collateral damage". The same as 50,000 years ago, our attitude depends a lot more on who does to whom than it does on what is being done.

Grammar Nazi to the rescue

[Anonymous Coward]

Right of passage? Rite of passage!

Re:Grammar Nazi to the rescue

[Anonymous Coward]

they should of checked there dictionary.

Why only women?

[TheDarkMaster]

Why only violence against women is unacceptable, when any type of violence should be unacceptable?

Re:Why only women?

[rikkards]

It always irks me when domestic violence is attributed to violence against just women. There are estimates that it is pretty much 50/50 for both genders but men don't report it. Also usually if it is against men and the assailant is a woman there will be weapons usually leading to more severe damage

Re:Why only women?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please link to the actual study. Your link is to a blog, which links to an opinion site dedicated to battered men which cites the original study.

Here is the original study for anyone interested in the method and actual conclusions: http://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/pdf/NISVS_Report2010-a.pdf

Here is the actual statistic from the article summary, which has a lot of other statistics.

About 1 in 4 women (24.3%) and 1 in 7 men (13.8%) have experienced severe physical violence by an intimate partner (e.g., hit with a fist or something hard, beaten, slammed against something) at some point in their lifetime

Re:Why only women?

[Shadow of Eternity]

Actually it's 70% of non-reciprocal violence committed by women, and 50/50 of reciprocal violence. Furthermore that study is heavily affected by methodological problems such as their gender restricted definition of rape (male victims are classified as "other").

Re:Why only women?

[anagama]

The police seem very reluctant to prosecute women, and men are reluctant to apear weak.

I can speak to the second part. I've been punched in the face exactly one time in my life -- saw stars even -- by my then girlfriend. At a different point in our relationship, she choked me and by the time I realized she was serious, I was getting dizzy and my ability to stop it was compromised. Lucky for me she quit on her own. That was well over 20 years ago -- back then I said nothing. Even today, despite the passage of time and the consequent ability to chalk up my reticence about the incident to the ignorance of youth, I feel embarrassed by it -- so much so that it is a struggle to not post this as AC.

Innaccurate

[guises]

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?

Re:Innaccurate

[Anonymous Coward]

I played through GTA 5 on launch and then a year later, this past month, I played the next gen version.

I don't think I killed a single hooker or stripper in either play through. That's about 70 hours worth of play. I think I had a total of two lap dances. I never had sex with anyone. The only women that I killed were those that happened to also be in the crowds of men (that is, they were just "people" in the crowd when I accidentally took a corner wrong in my car at high speeds).

In fact, if you play through the game, the story is actually kind of touching. While it plays on generic 80s/90s films and tropes and cliches, the gangster angry family man learns some lessons and becomes more family oriented and reconsiders his ways (because men always have to rethink their interests and careers and give them up for their wives and children, of course). The stupid shithole vapid daughter actually has some rather mature moments of realization and appreciation. A part where she is caught up in wanting to be an "american idle" style star/joke and is taken advantage of by men in hollywood has a really amusing and sweet moment where her father and "uncle trevor" come to defend her against those creeps. Even the wife who is a shrill bitch turns out to be more dimensional than the first part of the game portrays.

The game has some meat if you bother to give it a chance.

There are also some horrifying moments. Moments that are hard to stomach. They are not targeting women in those moments and they serve to the greater commentary on american society, which is the whole point of the GTA series. There's a gruesome drawn out scene where you torture a *man* on the command of your government. There's a scene where a couple (part of the story) are murdered in their apartment by the one of these three main characters who is totally psycho. You don't actually see it happen. You just see the character go into an apartment. Then awhile later, he comes out and has blood spatter on his clothes. That's it. No commentary about what happened.

Of course, why let that stop a "good bit of activism"? These are the same idiots who support people like Anita Sarkessian who portrays games like Hit Man as being games where you are forced to and rewarded for murdering strippers in a mission (you don't have to kill them, I DO NOT KNOW ANYONE WHO HAS DONE THAT... and you are PENALIZED for it). But nobody gives a shit. Even game developers eat the shit right out of her ass and don't question her bullshit.

The funny thing is whenever anyone in gaming speaks up and says they don't appreciate their hobby or interest being taken over by "social justice warriors" capitalizing on the opportunity to push their agendas on people and degrade the audience and shame them, the response is "oh shut the fuck up, neckbeard, Anita isn't going to take your games away".

Well....

So if it were violence against white men

[ruir]

It would not be a problem, would it?

Selective media censoring

[MindPrison]

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!