Rockstar's latest mob story | This Week in Business

gamesindustry.biz:

Brendan Sinclair

Managing Editor

Friday 22nd April 2022

This Week in Business is our weekly recap column, a collection of stats and quotes from recent stories presented with a dash of opinion (sometimes more than a dash) and intended to shed light on various trends. Check back every Friday for a new entry.

This week we received an answer to whether or not Rockstar would remove transphobic elements from the next-gen versions of Grand Theft Auto 5, something it was called on to do last year by Kotaku writer Carolyn Petit, a call that was then echoed by the LGBTQ+ game developer group Out Making Games.

The answer, as pointed out by an admin of a GTA fan community this week, was to remove a number of trans caricatures from the game, some tasteless NPC barks, and at least one background trans joke. It wasn't much. So little, in fact, that the game was out for three weeks before people started noticing the changes.

"As slight as the edits were, what they say is a little more meaningful"

But as slight as the edits were, what they say is a little more meaningful. They say that Rockstar, a company that has prided itself on being a thumb in the eye of pretty much everyone, has decided that there are limits.

Of course, there have always been limits. There are no children in GTA, for example. And as much as this has always been a pragmatic decision to avoid the incredibly predictable outrage over in-game violence to spark back up, this choice also tells us something about Rockstar. Clearly, Rockstar either believes allowing players to playact murdering children would be wrong, or it's afraid of crossing the politicians and industry ratings boards. Either explanation undermines any argument that Rockstar is an equal opportunity offender,