GTA Sales Demand

This New Year has seen US attorney, Jack Thompson, at his desk with renewed energy and an email address list that just won’t stop. Today, SPOnG (and many others we assume) was copied into the following email from the Thompson. The gist is that Jack’s talking to Bill Gates about Grand Theft Auto IV.

Here’s what we received:

The line we most cherish is, "[the report] makes it abundantly clear that unless such prohibitions are in place, then millions of units of the new Grand Theft Auto game will be sold directly to minors".

The report referred to by Jack, “Preventing M-Rated Video Game Sales to Minors “,comes from the Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility. This US group comprises a collection of Christian organisations which, “utilize(s) religious investments and other resources to change unjust or harmful corporate policies, working for peace, economic justice and stewardship of the Earth.”

Nowhere in the report does Grand Theft Auto IV get a mention; and nowhere in it are sales predictions - the like of which would brings smiles to RockStar staff and shareholders - of 'millions of units' mentioned predicted.

The report is about how retailers should monitor and enforce Mature (M) ratings of games so that minors should not be able to purchase them. You know, like the rating says.

Its conclusion includes the paragraph:

Right, OK… but nowhere in the report can we find anything that demands that developers or publishers actually stop making M-rated games. Nor does the assumption that somehow Microsoft staffers must monitor games playable on their platform as they are being SOLD.

Using a report aimed at retail to demand that a bloke (Mr Billiam Gates, esq) who has little or nothing to do with the production of a piece of hardware that plays a video game made by another company, is - in SPOnG’s violence-addled minds (see below) – akin to emailing the head of a company that owns another company that produces the plastic that makes holsters for semi-automatic weapons, and demanding that he stops those weapons being sold to the certifiably insane.

It doesn’t make sense in the debate about violence nor retail standards and is therfore nothing other than self-promotion. But, as we said, SPOnG is so addled by violent images that we're probably unable to make sane comment. Just to show you how violence-sodden we are here at SPOnG, we’d suggest you get a copy of of one of our favourite slices of action in Titus Andronicus which includes 14 killings, six severed members, three rapes, one person being buried alive and a hunk of cannibalism.