GTA: Vice City Edited Due to Public Outcry
- December 11, 2003 06:05 AM PST
- Email this!
Pressure from Haitian American activist groups cause publisher to cut controversial dialogue.
Publisher Take Two Interactive has announced that it will remove several phrases from future copies of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City that has incensed Haitian Americans and the mayor of New York. The key phrase that in question was in a mission where the main character is told to "Kill all the Haitians!" - a statement not referring to Haitians in general but referring to all members of the Haitian drug cartel. In protest to the taken-out-of-context dialogue, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg said, "if I don't get a decent response, we are going to do everything we possibly can."In a response to the negative publicity, Take Two defended the game, saying that it did have a Mature rating and that "video games have evolved as an adult medium, not unlike literature, movies and music." The publisher did also apologize for the "hurt and anger" that resulted to the Haitian-American community, agreeing to remove the controversial lines of dialogue from future copies of the game.
Of all the blatantly morally deplorable content in the Grand Theft Auto series, from picking up prostitutes (and killing them to get your money back) to mercilessly running over innocent pedestrians and law enforcement officials, it seems odd that the company receives such heat for content that wasn't explicitly derogatory. The outcry seems to show that political opportunism and media sensationalism are more at play than moral scrutinizing of violent video games.
