The UK team here at PC Gamer were delighted when the leaked setting for the new Assassin's Creed game was revealed to be Victorian London. Fantastic! But sometimes folks can go a bit Wee Britain when depicting our rainy little island, so after a team brainstorm and some hasty photoshopping, we've come up with a list of dos and don'ts for Ubi to take note of when building London for Assassin's Creed. Stick to these rules and you're sure to get the best—or at least silliest—Assassin's Creed yet.
Let's begin with a few obvious dos.
DO: Replace hay carts with heaps of urchins.
DO: Hidden blades in top hats.
DO: Hidden top hats in blades.
DO: Replace the Brotherhood with a network of chimney sweeps. Instead of assigning them assassination tasks from a menu, you could carry mucky children to the rooftops of known Templar sympathisers.
DO: Tie Jack the Ripper into the templar/assassin conspiracy.
DO: Secret Freemason shenanigans.
DO: Include Darwin as the new Da vinci. He can sell you crafting materials and later invent remote controlled pigeon bombs.
DO: Make Big Ben bong when you synchronise on top of it, irrespective of the time of day.
DO: An exact copy of the plot of Assassin s Creed 2, only with Queen Victoria instead of the Pope. The ending should be a protracted, brutal, 20 minute-long fight against the Queen in a neon Precursor temple hidden under Buckingham Palace. Also the Queen is a wizard.
DO: Go on a stealth mission with the Elephant Man.
DO: Press X to Chartism.
DO: Redeem Uplay points for bigger mutton chops.
DO: At the top of a tower, obscure view with featureless wall of London fog.
DO: Replace eagles with big ravens.
DO: Have an assassination mission in which you have three days to pass off a Cockney flower girl assassin as a lady, so that she can infiltrate the highest levels of London society.
DO: Have a related escort mission in which you conduct an inebriated Cockney dustman to the church. He must get there on time.
DO: Include AI imperative that forces horse-drawn carriages to arrive in threes.
DO: Share a pipe with guffawing gentlefops.
DO: Surround the player with the ambient retching and coughing at all times.
DO: Air assassinate a rat.
DO: Code urchins to spontaneously burst into song.
DO: Put a synchronisation point on Buckingham Palace.
DO: Charles Dance. Benedict Cumberbatch. Judi Dench. Helen Mirren. Damien Lewis. Tom Hiddleston. Tom Hardy. Christopher Eccleston. Michael Caine.
Onward, to the things you absolutely shouldn't do with the Victorian London setting.
Image credit: Walt Disney Productions' Mary Poppins.
DON T: Go full cockney stereotype. We hereby present a list of banned phrases:
OWRIGHT GUVNAH! , Apples and pears! , Two and eight , Dog and bone and so on and so on ad nauseum.
DON'T: Include Sherlock Holmes as your mate, or a character who it turns out Sherlock Holmes is based on, or Arthur Conan Doyle acting like Sherlock Holmes, or any narrative device that lets you meet and solve crimes with a human sharing a strong resemblance to the fictional character of Sherlock Holmes.
DON T: Put a red bus in it. You may have an overwhelming urge to put a red bus in it even though buses weren't invented until much later. Stay strong.
DON T: Make the player collect pages from Charles Dickens manuscript for A Tale of Two Cities to unlock bonus missions in Paris.
DON T: Allow player character to swim in the the Thames, unless you re prepared to code a procedural turd generator.
DON'T: Include a skybox that isn't some variation on gunmetal grey.
DON T: Allow even a glimmer of pure sunlight touch the upturned faces of the populace.
DON T: Use some weird Animus trick to put Shakespeare in it. Not even the ghost of Shakespeare. Not even zombie Shakespeare.
DON T: Include an interactive rooftop dance number. Or maybe do.
DON T: Air assassinate floating nanny.
Nope.
DON T: Include that mission you ve built that involves escaping a burning building as it collapses around you. You know the one.
DON T: Let Brian Blessed into the voice booth. He can t enter if you don t invite him in.
DON T: Spend considerable effort creating, animating and voicing David Livingstone, just so a character can say Dr Livingstone, I presume? in a cutscene.
DON T: Ask Dick Van Dyke to voice a character. Even a minor one.
DON T: Mess up the inevitable climactic Tower of London mission.
DON T: Have upgradable speed pants. Come on Ubisoft, we shouldn t have to tell you these things.
DON T: Accidentally go a bit Steampunk.
DON'T: Blimps. No blimps.
DON T: Use the Animus to manifest the ghosts of Christmas past, present or future.
DON T: Skin ten tabby cats to upgrade your boots.
DON T: Contrary to the words of Warren Zevon and the films of John Landis, there are no werewolves in London.
DON'T: Danny Wallace. Danny Dyer. Ricky Gervais. Stephen Fry. John Cleese. Patrick Stewart.
And that just about covers it. What would you like to see from the next Assassin's Creed? Andy has a few ideas in his article about fixing the series.
Super Wolfenstein HD is quite the thing. It's Id's classic FPS, reimagined with physics. And silliness. You can download and play it for free.
It was created for the Indies VS PewDiePie jam—the same competition that gave us the relaxing Where Is My Hammer? Here there's more challenge, thanks to enemies that stumble and ragdoll around. Ammo can be sparse, too, which can leave you fumbling around with a shovel as a dog vaguely ambles in your direction.
Really, it's all an amusing and ridiculous distraction, as I can prove via the following gif webm:
Too many... deals... so tired... let me rest here a spell.
THE SALE STOAT SAYS:
There's nothing I love more than ferreting out great deals, but an entire game for free? Otter bargain!
Hopefully you've recovered from the commercial frenzy of Black Friday, because the sale horn is once again honking. GOG's Big Winter Sale has launched with a 'Frost Flash Frenzy'. It's an event the DRM-free distributor describes as "a 48-hour long flash-deal bonanza with 30 deals per hour, deeply-discounted daily bundles, and a 'first come, first served' giveaway of 250,000 FREE copies of Age of Wonders."
Sounds exhausting, frankly, but also cheap.
The big news right now is the 250,000 free copies of classic strategy Age of Wonders. Head quickly to GOG's front page to grab one before they're gone.
As for the flash-deals, there's some great stuff if you're quick enough. GOG are teasing 85% off The Witchers 1 & 2, 75% off the STALKER bundle, and 50% off the excellent Xenonauts. With new discounts each hour, you've a decision to make: is it practical to tape open your eyes for 48 hours in an attempt to see every reduction?
Last month, Valve launched a promotional contest for the game Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris. The studio asked their community creators to submit TF2 items related to the Tomb Raider series. In that post, they wrote the following sentence:
If you've been waiting for your chance to put the heavy in short shorts, this is it. (Please don't do this.)
There was only one possible outcome.
"You might remember we specifically told you not to make Heavy short shorts," wrote the TF2 team last night. "However, once we actually glimpsed the majesty of Heavy short shorts, we saw the error of our ways."
In addition to the Jungle Booty, other winning items include the Crown of the Old Kingdom hat and the Tomb Readers sunglasses. All items are now available to those who pre-order Temple of Osiris, and will eventually make their way to the MannCo store along with an additional three runner-up items.
The first thing I did in Infini-Quest was attempt to shave an angry horse. That is a strong opening for a game. It may not happen to you, though. Maybe you'll discuss art with an outraged parrot, or crawl past an abandoned brewery, or offer unwanted advice to an ancient golem.
Your actions are defined partly by your own whims, but mostly by random generation. Infini-Quest is a free browser game, created for the Procedural Generation Jam. It's a text adventure, of sorts, in which you must drag a desired action from the left page onto an object or location on the right. Do so, and you'll have the action described, and be given the result—be it gaining an item, forgetting a skill, or wallowing in a deep sense of shame and regret.
It's often very silly—the randomness of the actions and their consequences creating a strange tale of terrible decisions. Things happen—damage is taken, enemies are defeated, and progress is gained—and it's often hard to know why. That's all part of the fun, though. Infini-Quest invites you to push toward the most ridiculous and surprising interactions. Its silliness isn't a thing that happens to you; it's a thing that you define and own.
Whether you re an aspiring streamer, have a Skype interview coming up, or simply have friends abroad you want to keep in touch with, you ll probably need a webcam at some point. Unfortunately, when building a gaming PC, a webcam tends to be that component you only realize you re missing after you need it. There are a lot of webcams out there, and it s hard to judge a camera s quality without plugging it in and using it firsthand. I tested nearly a dozen different webcams to find out which was the best.
Update 2/5/2016: We've checked out prices and competitors for webcams and our choices are still the best. Razer's Stargazer webcam, coming in Q2 2016, may be a contender. We'll update again when we test it.
The best webcam
Logitech makes a lot of webcams. They have the most options of any manufacturer, essentially selling a webcam at each $10 interval between $30 and $70. Through all my testing, Logitech cameras were of a consistently higher quality than their competitors, but they were also more expensive. The c525 and c615, Logitech s mid-tier options, added more features and ease of use instead of increased camera quality, but the next step up, the Logitech c920, was clearly on a different level.
All you have to do is look to see the difference in the c920 s picture quality. It has 1080p resolution with a large FOV, a sharp image, and a wide angle making everything about its picture look more camera than webcam. When I was testing it in low light, the auto image adjustments worked so well I had to double check the lights were actually turned off. It s significantly cheaper than other webcams of its caliber. The Microsoft LifeCam Studio is only $10 cheaper but looks significantly worse, while the Logitech c930e has better, but comparable, video quality with a higher FOV and costs nearly $40 more.
c920 vs lifecam studio
Logitech c920:
Microsoft LifeCam Studio:
Both at max streaming resolution of 1080p with auto image adjustments on, image can be improved with manual adjustment. Click the arrows to enlarge.
One test I tried on every webcam was quickly moving my hand extremely close to the lens to see how its focus, white balance, and brightness reacted. When I did this to the c920, the results were amazing; instead of the blurry, pink blob I was used to seeing, I could make out the details of my fingerprints. Time and time again, the c920 impressed me not just for the quality of its image in ideal conditions, but its consistent quality in all settings. On two separate occasions, I streamed live sporting events from the middle of a field with nothing but the c920 plugged into my laptop and—from morning light to nighttime stadium lights with people sprinting through the frame—it didn t miss one pass.
Logitech s webcam software didn t automatically install when I plugged any of their cameras in. That's a minor inconvenience, which Microsoft cameras avoid. Logitech's software is definitely worth downloading, though. The c920 s auto image adjustments are top-notch when adapting to different levels of light, but the white balance and saturation may take some fine-tuning. On its own, the c920 can leave an image a little washed out and lacking in color, which can easily be fixed from the webcam software. Indeed, if you aren t expecting your location or lighting to change often, I would recommend fine-tuning the image settings for any webcam, as none of the auto-modes I used were entirely spot-on.
For a moment, I questioned whether or not the c920 s large frame size would actually be a problem for live streaming games. I looked small in the frame when sitting at my desk, and when I scaled down to the traditional facecam size in the corner of a stream, the wide-angle was a drawback rather than a feature. But, again, a solution came in Logitech s webcam software, which made it easy for me to digitally zoom in and adjust the frame size without a noticeable drop in quality. Even the best webcams are limited to 1080p while streaming and 720p while Skyping, and claims of high resolution can be a red herring marketing tool—it doesn t matter if your phone can take 12 megapixel pictures if the camera is garbage, you re just taking really big, bad pictures—but the c920 has a high-quality camera.
It is Logitech s most expensive consumer webcam, but the c920 s price never actually reaches its $100 MSRP, instead usually sitting in the price range of $60-$70. That s still expensive for a webcam, but it s worth it for the noticeable jump in quality compared to anything close to it. The Logitech c920 is simply the best webcam available. Anything cheaper will come with a distracting drop in quality, anything more expensive and you won t notice enough of an improvement until you start shooting photos or video with a proper camera.
The best budget webcam
The Logitech c920, and Logitech cameras in general, are really top-notch, but that quality comes at a premium that not everybody wants to pay. High fidelity cameras are expensive to make, and the generic $5 cameras that litter Amazon and Newegg are simply not worth it. So while the $25 Microsoft LifeCam HD-3000 might not seem so budget, generally staying in the $25-30 price range, it is the best quality you can get at such a low price.
The HD-3000 is a plug-n-play camera in the truest meaning on the term. The stand is very adaptable and fit every monitor I put it on. The camera head has a large degree of flexibility, meaning I could just throw it on top of my monitor and adjust on the fly. This flexibility and ease of use was a trait of all the Microsoft webcams and is one of the key places they have bested Logitech. They were were also the only ones to download their webcam software automatically (on Windows, go figure), and that software is very robust.
Hd-3000 vs Live! Chat
Microsoft LifeCam HD-3000:
Creative Live! Chat:
Both at max streaming resolution of 720p. Click the arrows to enlarge.
Although the HD-3000 s auto image adjustments, a system which Microsoft calls TrueColor, did a good job adjusting to all the light levels I tried, the white balance would fluctuate somewhat distractingly. For example, when I was in front of a white wall, TrueColor would change the white balance as I moved my hand to cover more or less of the wall. This is good in theory, but it meant my face—the part I actually cared about being correctly color balanced—would change from red-ish to blue-ish with the wave of my hand. The HD-3000 can be made to look spot on, but I would recommend turning off TrueColor and setting the white balance and saturation manually.
The image quality isn't quite as nice as the Logitech c310, but the Microsoft LifeCam HD-3000 is around $15 cheaper for decent quality. The small increase in quality for the c310 doesn t justify its price jump.
The most versatile webcam
The $40 Logitech c525 is not the best quality webcam Logitech has to offer, but it has a lot of features that others don t. Comparing only video quality, the c310 is probably better and costs nearly the same price, but the c310 s angle can only be adjusted vertically and it doesn t attach to some monitors very well. The c525 has a huge range of motion, a much more adaptable base, and can fold flat to protect the lens during transport. The c525 feels like a webcam for laptops, meant to replace or upgrade the one built into the screen, but its versatility makes it a great webcam for unconventional setups or people moving it between multiple rigs.
The unique design and shape of the c525 is something you won t see anywhere else. The first time I unfolded it reminded me of the Transformers toys I played with as a kid, except this wasn t horribly frustrating to get back together. The only other webcam with a similar design is another Logitech, the c615. The c615 is nicer overall but it s around $20-25 more expensive, getting close to the price of the c920 without reaching that level of quality. The c525 strikes a great balance: you're paying for its unique features while still getting a nice camera, putting it in a rare niche of the webcam market. It fills a need that the c615 overshoots because of its steep price.
If you plan to travel or change streaming locations a lot, the Logitech c525 is the perfect compromise of features. It usually costs around $30-40 and doesn t have the greatest quality for that price, but it can adapt to almost any setting. The c525 is also backed up by Logitech s superior auto image adjustments, meaning changes in light levels are easier to handle. If you want pure value for image quality, the c525 isn t the right choice, but it provides versatility you can t find in other webcams.
How we test webcams and others we tested
Webcams have become a part of gaming culture. With the rise of YouTube Let s Plays and Twitch livestreams, seeing who is playing a game has become nearly as important as seeing the game itself. Not everyone cares about seeing a facecam in the corner of their favorite stream, but it s no coincidence that pretty much every top-rated streamer has a webcam prominently featured.
Whether you re an aspiring streamer, have a Skype interview coming up, or simply have friends abroad you want to keep in touch with, you ll probably need a webcam at some point. Unfortunately, when building a gaming PC, a webcam tends to be that component you only realize you re missing after you need it. When I switched back to a desktop PC after using a gaming laptop for four years I had a truly embarrassing moment as I realized, Oh right, those don t just come built into the monitor.
First and foremost, a camera should be judged by the quality of its picture. If a webcam's price seems too good to be true, it probably doesn't look very good. Super cheap webcams can have the visual fidelity of filming yourself with a potato, but spend too much money and you ll hit a plateau where you can t see a practical difference besides the cost. As a PC peripheral that will be used infrequently by most of us—when compared to something like a mouse or keyboard—or scaled to the corner of a streamer s screen, I wanted to find the perfect balance of price and image quality.
Out of every camera I tried, the Logitech c920 was the overall best. It has the best image quality available without approaching the $100 price point of the webcams it can be compared to. Logitech has the widest webcam selection by far and, for the most part, their cameras were consistently the best ones I tried. You have to pay a bit more than other brands, but it's usually worth it.
The Logitech c920 is my primary recommendation, but I also picked out the best budget webcam (one that doesn't look like crap, and costs only $25) and the most versatile webcam for travel or unusual desk setups.
The only difference is the camera used: Logitech c920 vs Creative Live! Sync
Testing webcams
I tested the webcams in the practical situations that they would be used. Making a call on Skype will be the most common use of a webcam for non-streamers, but Skype limits your camera s resolution to 720p, leveling the playing field for those limited to 720p by default.
I used OBS to both livestream and record video from each camera, testing them both fullscreen and scaled down to a facecam size. I also used each manufacturer s webcam software to take the highest possible resolution pictures with each and manually adjust settings like white balance, brightness, auto-focus, and others where applicable. Each of these situations were tested with multiple lighting setups from overhead fluorescent bulbs to nothing but the glow of the monitor in front of me.
Aside from the video quality, I also took a look at their ease of use. Each manufacturer has a different method of attaching a webcam to the monitor, so I tested them across different monitor shapes and sizes. I took into account whether the webcam cord was long enough to reach from the top of a monitor to a case underneath a desk. I tested how easy they were to angle, readjust, and if they would fall off or reposition themselves if I bumped the desk. I tested the plug-n-play nature of them and noted whether the webcams downloaded drivers or software automatically. Lastly, I recorded audio with their built-in microphones, but this was not a heavily influencing factor as a webcam should be bought with video in mind first.
Competitors
We tried out a whole bunch of webcams during the testing process for this article. The Logitech c920 was crowned the victor, but here are some of the others we tried and why they didn t quite hit the mark.
The c310 is a very nice quality camera and is on the lower-end of Logitech s prices, but that also makes it a good example of the premium you pay for a logitech webcam. The c310 has a crisp image, but any other advantages it has over the Microsoft LifeCam HD-3000 are negligible compared to the price increase.
As I mentioned in my discussion of the c525, the c615 has a versatile design and a nice quality image, but it s also a steep price increase from the c525. For $10 more you can get the c920, which blows this out of the water even without the foldable design.
This is a better quality camera than the c920, but it costs nearly $40 more and is designed with business conferencing in mind. That means the Logitech webcam software won t work, adjusting the image can be very difficult, and the FOV is far wider than an individual person would want. It s a fantastic webcam, but really not intended for the average consumer.
Creative makes cheap webcams that seem appealing enough, but I can not recommend that anyone buys them. The Live! Sync manages to make $18 look expensive with its very poor picture quality, unadjustable camera head, and no webcam software.
Once again, Creative s Live! Chat is not worth its price. It is definitely better than the Sync, with an adjustable camera head and a higher quality picture, but the Microsoft LifeCam HD-3000 is only about $5 more expensive. There are simply better options for a similar cost.
I don t think the Senz3D is really meant to be a webcam. It s extremely expensive yet has a max resolution of 720p and quality comparable to the Logitech c310. It has 3D sensing and motion controls which didn t work too badly, but I was hard pressed to find games for it besides the ones that came with it. I think this is Creative s attempt at making a cheaper, PC-centric Kinect which is a noble goal, but until more people take advantage of the included SDK, the Senz3D won t have much use.
The Microsoft cameras are significantly easier to use in both their software and their adjustability, but the picture quality isn't up to Logitech's bar. The LifeCam Cinema s design is unique and flexible, but its cost is high considering Logitech s higher quality.
Similar to the LifeCam Cinema, the LifeCam Studio is a great camera with fantastic adjustability, but it s only $10 away from the significantly better Logitech c920. The Studio is a fine looking 1080p webcam, but only $10 more will get you a huge step up.
Future testing
I still need to test the Logitech c270, their webcam that is slightly cheaper than the c310. However, it s still more expensive than the Microsoft LifeCam HD-3000, which I recommend over the c310 as a budget option. In general, I am interested to see a true competitor to Logitech enter the webcam market, as currently only Microsoft can hold a candle to its quality. I also want to test the Brother NW1000, another high-end webcam which could rival the c920, even if it does cost more.
Lastly, I want to buy as many different low-end, $5 webcams as I can possibly find and see if even one of them is slightly worth it. But if the webcams I've tested are any indication, you get what you pay for, and you're not going to want to stream games, or even use Skype, with a webcam that costs less than $20.
We ll keep this list up to date as new webcams are released and prices shift. Price for quality had a big influence on my judgment, so if prices permanently dip or raise, it could affect the how highly I rate a specific webcam. As for the
Logitech c920, unless it goes back to costing $100, it will take a new webcam entering the market to dethrone it.
A note on affiliates: some of our stories, like this one, include affiliate links to stores like Amazon. These online stores share a small amount of revenue with us if you buy something through one of these links, which helps support our work evaluating PC components.
Bossa Studios' follow-up to Surgeon Simulator, I am Bread, might be even more frustrating than Surgeon Simulator. I am a piece of bread, and movement is similar to Octodad, except I have no limbs, so I'm just flopping around by latching onto surfaces by my corners. The goal is to become covered in good stuff—butter, jam—while avoiding edibility-reducing surfaces such as the floor. Eventually, I must become toast.
Being bread sucks. It's painfully challenging to get used to the controls, as you'll see in the video I recorded. And that's the point, of course—it doesn't mean I don't like it. I put over seven hours into Surgeon Simulator, because once I accepted how ruthlessly my patience would be tested, I made a sort of game of that. How long can I go before I crack?
The bread animation is great, and there are actually more decisions to make than "should I throw my controller against the wall now or later." There's a lot of freedom, really—multiple paths and many techniques to discover. Flopping end over end can be the most efficient way to travel, but can be worryingly fast. Spinning my floury body around to leap over gaps is especially fun (when I hit my landing, at least.) I might be looking forward to watching other people play more than playing myself, as I'm sure the speed runs will be fantastic.
I'm most disappointed that I am Bread doesn't feel as funny to me as Surgeon Simulator, at least not yet. It's absurd and silly, but the antics of a slice of bread just don't get me quite like awkwardly shushing a sleeping patient and then dropping one of their lungs on the floor. It actually has strangely sad undertones, and that could turn out interesting later on. I didn't expect to be curious about the plot of a game starring a slice of bread, but hey, I kind of am.
I am Bread is on Early Access now, so it's not quite complete, but the developer plans to release it within a few months. There are more levels and bonuses coming, they say, as well as leaderboards, achievements, and the expected bug fixes. The only thing I noticed on the latter front were some issues with the menu. It could also use remappable controls—I found the mouse and keyboard controls unusable as they were, though that may just be the nature of the game.
The best way to tell if I am Bread is for you is probably to watch someone else struggle with it, and decide "Do I want clutch my forehead as if my car just broke down on the way to the airport, causing me to miss a funeral?" That's kind of the feeling I got, but there are good times, too. The video above should give you an idea.
Intel and the ESL are putting on a little tournament not far from our San Francisco office this weekend, and we'd love to see you there! If seeing some of the best League of Legends and StarCraft II competitors duke it out wasn't enough, the winner will also receive some gear from Roccat.
All we need is your email address so that we can contact a winner on Friday afternoon (Pacific Time). Thanks to Roccat for providing us with stuff to give away.
In Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell, Johnny Gat and Kinzie Kensington go to Hell to rescue their boss, who's been kidnapped and dragged to New Hades as part of Satan's effort to marry off his daughter. And in case that's not weird enough, the Steam page says the game, a "standalone expansion" to Saints Row 4, will feature "a full length musical number." As it turns out, it's not kidding.
Thanks to the folk at IGN, we can witness... I'm not even sure what we're seeing here, to be honest. Brilliant marketing? Bizarre design choices? A shark, well-jumped? Or a studio that's giving its fans what they want by the double-bucketful?
I don't know. What I do know is that watching Johnny Gat belting out lines about how they best plan they've got is to "put one inside Satan's head" is the most fun I've had on YouTube today.
Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell comes out on January 20, 2015.
An Australian retailer has removed Grand Theft Auto 5 from its shelves following a petition attracting over 40,000 signatures. Organisers of the petition singled out GTA's depictions of sexual violence, prompting retailer Target to pull the game nationally.
"We've been speaking to many customers over recent days about the game, and there is a significant level of concern about the game's content," Target general manager of corporate affairs Jim Cooper said in a statement.
"We've also had customer feedback in support of us selling the game, and we respect their perspective on the issue. However, we feel the decision to stop selling GTA V is in line with the majority view of our customers."
According to the petition on Change.org, the three organisers are survivors of sexual violence. They're specifically concerned by the treatment of sex workers in the game.
"It's a game that encourages players to murder women for entertainment," the description reads. "The incentive is to commit sexual violence against women, then abuse or kill them to proceed or get 'health' points and now Target are stocking it and promoting it for your Xmas stocking.
"Please Target we appeal to you as women survivors of violence, including women who experienced violence in the sex industry, to immediately withdraw Grand Theft Auto V from sale."
The move prompted Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick to make a statement. Take-Two is Rockstar's parent company.
We are disappointed that an Australian retailer has chosen no longer to sell Grand Theft Auto V -- a title that has won extraordinary critical acclaim and has been enjoyed by tens of millions of consumers around the world," Zelnick said.
"Grand Theft Auto V explores mature themes and content similar to those found in many other popular and groundbreaking entertainment properties. Interactive entertainment is today's most compelling art form and shares the same creative freedom as books, television, and movies. I stand behind our products, the people who create them, and the consumers who play them.
Grand Theft Auto 3 was banned in Australia weeks after its release in 2001, prompting a new revised edition which removed the ability to engage with sex workers in the game. Nonetheless, these elements were not removed from following GTA titles for Australian audiences.
