In unusually strong language, the editorial staff of video site GameTrailers.com has condemned the ESRB for forcing the removal of Fallout 3 trailers last week.
The comments were made in a podcast released Friday. GameTrailers editor-in-chief Shane Satterfield (left) and staffer "Grumpy" ripped the ESRB which, in addition to rating game content, enforces the industry's advertising standards.
The segment on the ESRB starts just after the 26-minute mark of the podcast. Here's a sample:
Shane: You may wonder why all the trailers ever released for Fallout 3 were removed from GameTrailers.com. Well the reason that happened is because of our good pals at the ESRB.
Grumpy: Wankers! ...I am just absolutely flabbergasted about the ESRB. They're a bunch of bleepwads sitting in Washington.
Shane: Hear, hear!
Grumpy: ...they get publishers to pull video footage. They assisted in getting the Fallout 3 ads taken out of Washington because some dumb bleepwit... on a bus got upset that they were showing images of decimated Washington...
Shane: Never watched a movie before!
Grumpy: Exactly. It's a futuristic, post-apocalyptic game. I am so sick of this nanny state... they are not a government organization. They are a body made up of unqualified nincompoops... unfortunately, they're taking the nanny state to the nth degree... They make the FCC look like a bunch of broad-minded, non-censorship individuals... It sucks that Bethesda had to pull all this Fallout 3 stuff, because it was bleeping good media...
Shane: All age-gated...
Grumpy: ...nobody could get at it. But because some little toe-rag at ESRB decides to get pissed off about something, all that good work is gone... Good job, Bethesda. It sucks that they have to kowtow to the ESRB...
Shane: I hate the ESRB... The week before that we had gotten an exclusive on a trailer... suddenly we get a call... and the publisher is telling us to take it down because of the ESRB... The ESRB can only regulate media that the publishers send us. Anything that we create in-house, as GameTrailers, they can't touch... we'll make our own violent-as-hell trailer that they can't do anything about. So we did. We put it up, it was huge... then we get a call from publisher X [who said] "...the ESRB is putting pressure on us and so that bleep is going to run downhill to where we can't work with you guys unless you do what the ESRB says" ...they are like the frickin' Mafia... These people have totally gone like a frickin' power trip...
GP: Thanks to GP reader Yukimura for the tip.
UPDATE: The ESRB has declined to comment on this story.
Comments
Re: GameTrailers Editors Go OFF on ESRB over Fallout 3 Trailer
While that is true, I doubt they intended for their voluntary regulatory institution to turn into something that actively censors their products!
Re: GameTrailers Editors Go OFF on ESRB over Fallout 3 Trailer
I think it was more that they were forced to. The government has come down so hard on video games, threatinging them with regulation and passing pro-censorship anti-gaming laws that they had to make their voluntary regulations super strict to try and stop it even though it hasn't. It's the nanny-state and overt government regulation threats that is the main problem here. Politicans don't give a shit about Freedom of Speech only pandering to moralist prudes and "protect the children" assholes.
"No law means no law" - Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black on the First Amendment