Exactly. The only issue I have, is why they removed it. Because the claims made about the game are just plain wrong.Elijin said:
PETITION: Continue to sell Grand Theft Auto 5 in Australia
- Thread starter SkullCap
- Start date
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Of course not! That's entirely different than what we have here. Did you not read the rest of my post?BloatedGuppy said:
I was coming up with another McDonald's analogy to keep with the theme, but it breaks down pretty rapidly when you fail to consider that Target is a department store. They carry both food and rat poison. That's the whole point of a department store: to carry EVERYTHING. Would you consider it a good thing if people started saying that they shouldn't carry rat poison just because they carry food? At least in that case, you could have a legitimate concern that the poison could get into the food with bad handling, but we are talking about a DVD with some data on it. At what point does a department store get to choose what they carry? When you have everything, SOMEONE is going to not like one of their products. Their choice may have been "material" to protect their image with these consumers, but the choice was completely reactionary, just as the watchdog group was. There couldn't have been enough time to analyze any data to find if these watchdogs would dent their bottom line, that would take weeks.
Which was fucking bullshit if you ask me. If financial assassination is the penalty for having an opinion publicly, then there should be some law put in place to prevent that. I don't say that lightly either. We can not make a world for ourselves where having an unpopular opinion makes you a second-class citizen. We just can't!
I hope that is all that comes of this, but you do not want to give watchdog groups like this any space. They will take what momentum they got here and apply it elsewhere. Other groups might see that if one group was able to affect a change to censor in their favor, they might try it with something else too.
I'm not Australian, so it doesn't even affect me. I just think this whole thing is a bunch of shitty people convincing some other entity to do something shitty in their favor. It's not fair that the other side of these shitty peoples' argument didn't get considered before actions were taken. The petition that sparked this thread is that voice that wasn't heard, and I'm upset now that many of you are laughing at it because you don't think it was a big deal.
it is censorship when people start saying Big Macs are mysoginistic with no real proof and that convinces Mc Donalds to stop selling burgers to avoid bad pressIceForce said:
self-censorship is still censorship
You chose very generalized language. "A series of decisions was made and now a product is gone...that's censorship!". I was poking fun.Signa said:
You know how some people like to stay stuff like "When you use terms like 'stop raping me with your gaze' you are trivializing rape" (a sentiment I happen to agree with)? Well, censorship...actual honest to god censorship...is a really big deal. Specificity in language, please. Don't trivialize censorship.
It's to carry a lot of things, yes. Are you legitimately under the belief that department stores literally stock everything?Signa said:
Good. Because if I'm "laughing" at anything, it's a vocal demographic of this forum arguing through firmly pressed lips that THEIR consumer boycott was completely on the level whilst having it asked of them if that meant they were perfectly fine with other consumer boycotts. Exactly. Like. This. One. It just strikes me as a "You Reap What You Sow" moment so I'm having a hard time not being amused.Signa said:
I'm not laughing at the petition itself, I just think the ultimate fallout of it is negligible to non-existant. I have absolutely zero fears that this is a genuinely slippery slope and that several years from now we'll all be sat around without any games to buy saying "We should've acted". If I want to buy that shitty game I can still go and buy it in innumerable other places. My "freedoms" as a consumer have not been blunted in any meaningful way. I am WAY more upset about those fucking pork ribs. Not popular my ass.Signa said:
I don't think that I am. I mean, living in America, I've never had to deal with real actual government censorship, but this is as close to it as I can imagine in the modern world. Our FCC and MPAA censor TV and Movies from showing and saying certain things due to "someone think of the children!" and other similar moral outrages. A watchdog group such as this one is trying to impose the exact same changes our FCC and MPAA make to movies and TV for the exact same reasons. The only difference is this has avoided evaluation from an oversight committee before landing on shelves, unlike a TV show or movie.BloatedGuppy said:
So my word choice could be improved slightly, but are you seriously confused on what I'm communicating here?
Good.
This forum has been really shitty lately, so I've been trying to stay out of it. Hell, in the past, I've been on the fence with you, but you're earning +1 rep for not being like the people you speak of.
I'm absolutely sure that those pork ribs are a greater loss than GTA V. As for this thread, posts #3-7 are not in support of the petition, and I stopped counting after that, because 5 in a row before my post at #13 shows an serious lack of support for this petition. This displeases me.
eh that's a bit of a false comparison, you are asking for MORE things to be available that you WOULD BE interested in.IceForce said:
the story goes about REMOVING something that those people are NOT interested in.
OT: meh, expected this to crop up eventually, but don't feel too strongly either way, a silly petition that's trying to answer an equally as silly petition.
As someone who's recently got his Australian citizenship, I feel obliged to sign it. Giving a fair go and all.SkullCap said:
For my part, it's because this thread is working from a faulty premise to begin with.Signa said:
Grand Theft Auto V is still available for purchase in Australia. No content within the game has actually been changed in any way, no official governing body has stepped in to remove it from stores. Two chains owned by a single parent decided that it would be a better idea for them to remove the game from their shelves than continue to sell it.
It's not censorship. Hell, it's barely even an inconvenience for actual customers, because from what I've seen and heard people don't exactly go to places like Target and K-Mart for video games. We can argue about how stupid the petition that prompted their decision was until we pass out (though I'd hope it wouldn't take that long to come to the conclusion that the initial petition was pretty laughable), but at the end of the day Target Australia didn't have to provide a reason for why they removed Grand Theft Auto from their shelves in the first place. They weren't pressured into taking any action, unless you consider "listening to customers" as "being pressured", so I honestly don't see the point in this.
What's happening in New Zealand is far more worth getting upset about (though they're still perfectly entitled to do what they want with their stock, too) and yet that's all getting side-lined because of this stupid Grand Theft Auto V "censorship" nonsense.
not to take this off-topic, but what exactly is happening there? It's on the opposite side of the world for me so I have no idea to be honest.shrekfan246 said:
(and yes, this whole thing is laughable at this point, I think this is just alot of people being particularly obtuse to each other)
Sassafrass linked it above, about a week and a half or two weeks ago a retailer called The Warehouse Group decided that they would pull all R18+ material, games and DVDs, from their stores. Purchases which had already been made would be honored, but they're apparently no longer stocking anything with that rating.gmaverick019 said:
I guess the big difference is that it sounds like it was an entirely corporate decision, so there aren't any scapegoats for people to point fingers at.
One thing that amuses me about their decision is that they classified Game of Thrones as something they were fine with stocking, until Grand Theft Auto V for PS4/Xbox One came out.
Wait, it's my understanding select stores have chosen not to sell the game. People can still get it from other retailers.SkullCap said:
That's not censorship, it's just a minor inconvenience and probably bad for business in the long run. Anyway, screw the petition, just don't shop at those retailers anymore.
I don't know how loud those customers were being when they were listened to, but I just don't believe that they were being civil or practical. They were using lies and hyperbole to push their agenda. They probably got a lot of people to blindly repeat what they were told to ask Target to remove the game.shrekfan246 said:
What's happening in New Zealand is extremely unfortunate, but I'm OK with it as it has been presented to me. A single chain of stores without being prompted decided that they don't want to sell M rated games. That applies to ALL M rated games, and not one that is being singled out. It's a stupid move because all M games are not created equal, but at least they aren't singling out a certain game because someone told them to. It's the same thread of logic that keeps NC-17 movies out of theaters and AO games out of American stores. I can't argue with it if that's how they want to run their business.
And let me say it again to be clear: No one asked them to do it. I consider this an important fact that separates it from the Target case. I wouldn't expect a Jewish person to sell non-kosher meat at their deli, because they decided that it was against their beliefs. If on the other hand, they did sell non-kosher meats, and some other Jews told them to not sell them anymore, I'd side against his decision to remove those meats. Said Jews weren't going to buy those meats, and they have no right to say that the deli owner couldn't sell them. Deli owner and the Jews are just hurting the customers that wanted those meats.
eh while I don't like it and I'm glad I don't have to deal with that, I don't see the reasoning behind it being worse than the grand theft auto case, most people are arguing due to the context/reasoning behind it, not the fact that target isn't selling it anymore.shrekfan246 said:
Still, that's alot of random content to remove from shelves, hopefully some customers got some sweet deals on the inventory that was still in stores ^_^
although I have to laugh that they considered game of thrones legit while grand theft auto was a big no no...
you are pressuring people to change a piece of entertainment because you dont like what it shows, it is censorship, it fullfills the exact same goalZhukov said:
this kind of discussion reminds me what happened in my country a few years back
the way national television works, the state gives permission to different networks to keep broadcasting, the state is perfectly able to deny this permission to any network due to different reasons, so when a particular anti-government network was denied permission to keep broadcasting, a lot of people said it wasnt censorship, because it was legal and shit, the fact is, that network got silenced, atleast on national television, i believe they still broadcasted via cable or something but a lot of people dont have cable, this was only the begining, the other networks took a more neutral stance and avoided to critize the government to avoid a similar fate, little by little things got worse
fast foward to now, national tv networks are either owned by the government or dont dare to speak agaisnt the government, paper shortage now threatens the future of many newspapers and the government wont bother to help any newspaper that oppose them, yet another case of "but its not real censorship"
no, it is censorship
