ZD "Objective Reporting" Not Just For Linux

keefer writes "Since I know /. readers are generally fans of various ZD magazines anyway, I thought I'd pass this along that I saw from Blue's News. The gist is that programmer Randy Pitchford at Gearbox Software gave a .plan update talking about a piece Family PC(a ZD mag) did relating to some under-17-year-old supposedly being able to pick up Half-Life: Opposing Force, an M-rated game (17+), without incident at a CompUSA store. However, um, the game isn't even done yet, let alone gold or on the shelves."

I thought I'd post this in the YRO section for a couple of reasons. One is that it's starting to reverberate, and has generated at least one counter-editorial. But the second is a larger point. Half-Life and similar games are marketed to adults, not children; the 20-30 year old age group purchases almost all of these types of games. Yet attackers want to restrict the sales of these games to anyone on the basis that they're unsuitable for children. The fact that Family PC misjudged the game's release date when making up their article (remember, this had to be written months ago to make it to publication now, they probably forecast that the new game would be on sale by now) makes the attack more obvious, but these sorts of attacks happen all the time from the "save the children" crowd. (Family PC makes most of their income from advertising filtering software and similar snake-oil parental protective measures.) This is how you whip up the troops to go censor the internet or whatever other target you have in mind.