If you Don’t like GTA V, Don’t Buy it – Take Two President Instructs In Public Outburst

If you Don’t like GTA V, Don’t Buy it – Take Two President Instructs In Public Outburst

Following the removal of GTA V from two of the major departmental stores in Australia, owing to the petition on Change.org we saw Take Two CEO express his disappointment with the move publicly. The petition’s basis was the threat to society of game like this which depicted violence against women. Take Two interactive’s disappointment was earlier communicated to the public by CEO Strauss Zelnick who’s statement was somewhat measured and politically sound but earlier today President Karl Slatoff also expressed his views on Target and K-mart in a much more animated way than Zelnik.

Take Two President Karl Slatoff Expresses his Irritation On GTA V Ban With Flair.

Karl Slatoff while speaking before the audience in the BMO Capital Markets Technology and Digital Media Conference, started of by saying that the only logical way for individuals was not to buy the game personally whereas they are depriving “millions” of the game. He said:

“It’s one thing for someone to not want to buy a piece of content, which is completely understandable, and that’s really the solution. If you don’t like it and it’s offensive to you, then you don’t buy it.”

“But for a person or a group of people to try to make that decision for millions of people… We have 34 million people who bought Grand Theft Auto, and if these folks had their way, none of those people would be able to buy Grand Theft Auto. And that really just flies in the face of everything that free society is based on,” he continued.”It’s the freedom of expression, and to try to squelch that is a dangerous and slippery slope to go down.”

Slatoff displayed how this act was ‘squelching’ the people’s right of freedom of expression and looking at the counter petition to get GTA V back, we can say it is true for a lot of people especially when 27,000 people have signed the counter-petition so far and the number is expected to increase.
Furthermore, he explained that his reason was not because of loss of business as GTA V does not target one country, where only two retailers do not make up the country and that is main reason was how flawed the removal of the game was. He Said:

“Our business is going to be completely unaffected by this; it doesn’t make a difference to us. At the end of the day though, it’s not something you want because it’s a poor leadership decision.”
He added “Australia is relatively small for us, and two retailers are relatively small in the context of Australia… There are other places for folks to buy Grand Theft Auto in Australia.”

For one, this might just actually be increasing the game popularity but what is quite apparent that this is doing nothing more than making it inconvenient for consumers to get the game who’ll get it off other stores if K-mart and Target don’t offer the service. Or they can just order it online and enjoy the game at home.