Rockstar/EA Tit for Tat in GTA/Simpsons Feud

[wraggster]

Last week we discussed how GTA parody elements were pulled from The Simpsons Game after some of Rockstar's lawyers got into the act. Apparently, the folks at EA who made the game are a bit peeved about the aggressive lawyering on Rockstar's part and the wussy lawyering on EA's:
"The game begins with Bart wanting to play a game called Grand Theft Scratchy. Of course this is a parody of Grand Theft Auto. And Marge immediately takes it away from him. She tries to clean up the town and stop the game from being distributed in Springfield because Marge is against video game violence. She uses horrific violence to stop video game violence... in a video game... That's called irony. The people who make Grand Theft Auto - they spazzed out like little babies."

http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/29/2115233

[XDelusion]

And that is why Corporate Persons should have never been allowed. They are like GIANT crying babies, throwing there toys around with no limit to what they can do, and in the mean time lives get crushed under there heel....

...well this time it's Giant baby/company vs Giant Baby/Company so it's ok, but when a Corporate Person turns it's attention on you, you'll get squashed. Unless you are Negativland of course. ;)

[royvedas]

I am not the person to stand up for EA, because it definately is the software company I hate the most. However it pisses me off that Rockstar or whoever are so bitchy about this.

It should prove a great marketing value for Rockstar to have references to their game in a game like this.

[FBomb]

Isn't parody legal though? Why would they pull something out thats not illegal? Bunch ofsissy lawyers is right.

[jwilds73]

Isn't parody legal though? Why would they pull something out thats not illegal? Bunch ofsissy lawyers is right.

Yeah EA's laywers were big wussies check out this little guy that went up again Fruit of the Loom and won. http://www.prehensile.com/tales/meatloom/fruitlove.htm I can't believe EA wimped out like that. I guess their new slogan can be "EA Wimp's Big!".

[paul3100]

That part of the game remains where bart holds a copy of grand theft scratchy! didn't this report say it had been removed or did i miss understand?

paul

[devdj]

well rockstar didn't seem to crap themselves over the simpsons hit and run game. it is so stupid that rockstar are been all uptight about the new simpsons game and sure they took elements from driver on the ps1 to make the gta3 and the others.

[mike_jmg]

Now that you put it that way, who wouldn't

This is not just game parody, it turned into real life parody as people like that exist, and Rockstar can't afford more bad publicity than the one they already have.

So I think I would've done the same

[Mr. Shizzy]

Hmmmm....

Kind of hypocritical of Rockstar, IMO.

They just did a Jack Thompson parody for GTA IV.
And Thompson went nuts trying to make Rockstar remove it...