MADD Trying to Pull Over 'Grand Theft Auto IV' @ JustPressPlay

Monday.May.05.2008

MADD Trying to Pull Over 'Grand Theft Auto IV'

Kind of old news, but I just stumbled across it today.

Who isn't upset about the release of Grand Theft Auto IV? Rockstar, as expected, has created quite a laundry list of GTA haters that doesn't appear to have a cutoff point. Apparently, people get fussy about a game where you can stab pedestrians. Who would've thought?

Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) have thrown their hat (keys?) into the anti-GTA pool, calling for the ESRB to slap GTA IV with an Adult's Only rating. Naturally, MADD is singling out the game's inclusion of alcohol and drunk driving.

"Drunk driving is not a game, and it is not a joke," MADD said in a statement released Tuesday. "Drunk driving is a choice, a violent crime and it is also 100 percent preventable."

Now correct me if I'm wrong, but in GTA IV, isn't drunk driving a choice, a crime and 100 percent preventable (by taking a cab)?

Not only does MADD want GTA IV to hang the Adult's Only albatross around its neck, but they're also calling for Take-Two and Rockstar to halt distribution of the title "out of respect for the millions of victims/survivors of drunk driving."

In a statement released to the Associated Press, Rockstar said:

"We have a great deal of respect for MADD's mission, but we believe the mature audience for 'Grand Theft Auto IV' is more than sophisticated enough to understand the game's content," Rockstar Games said in a statement to The Associated Press on Wednesday. "For the same reason that you can't judge an entire film or television program by a single scene, you can't judge 'Grand Theft Auto IV' by a small aspect of the game."

Silly Rockstar. Don't they understand that it's much easier to take a single scene out of context and blow it out of proportion instead of analyzing the entire work? Duh.

MADD has yet to respond.

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