Rockstar Hypocrisy

Holy cow. Team Xbox reports that Rockstar has demanded and obtained removal of a Grand Theft Auto parody from The Simpsons Game! I am beyond shocked.

I mean, seriously??

The company that brought you one of the most violent and (secretly) pornographic video games in history is OFFENDED?! You gotta be kidding me, right?

And what about the other side of the coin? The Simpsons is known for its parody of everything under the sun. It frequently bites the hand that feeds it at Fox with impunity! Now the mega-billion dollar franchise caves to the likes of Rockstar?

Have I used enough question marks in this post??? (They were on sale today.)

The main reason I watch The Simpsons is to laugh at our culture. Like it or not (and I don’t), Rockstar’s games are a part of our culture. Newsflash: Part of the price of fame is FAME, people!!! Rockstar should be honored to be parodied alongside the likes of President Carter, The Rolling Stones, JK Rowling, and Albert freakin Brooks. If it’s good enough for those folks, why isn’t it good enough for you, Rockstar? Get your ego out of your poop-hole and have a laugh at yourselves.

And you, EA. Come on, grow some stones. If you take out all the parodies in The Simpsons game you won’t even have a game worth playing. Are you really that indescribably wimpy? If you are, John Madden should take his name away from you. You’ll get massacred in the locker room anyway. Who cares what Rockstar thinks. The Simpsons has taken on Rupert Murdoch for peetsakes! Your reputation as a game publisher is on the line too. Your little Simpsons game is going to tap into a HUGE market that you’ve never even approached before and also get some folks to play video games that would never have thought to do so. You want to throw away your intellectual cred in front of people with this kind of economic clout?

[shrug] What-eva.

What would serve Rockstar right is if some clever game developer at EA surreptitiously distributes the verboten level in much the same way that the sex scene level was “unofficially” distributed for Grand Theft Auto.

Payback’s a beeyotch, boys.