Chicago Bans GTA Ads from Public Transit

The Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) has pulled a series of bus advertisements promoting Rockstar games Grand Theft Auto IV off its buses and buildings in the city. The ads reveal several of the games characters in a police line up as The Usual Suspects. The ads depict the characters from the waist up and hardly seem offensive. The Chicago Transit Authority justified its actions stating, “that M-Rated ‘violent video games’ ought to be banned from its premises as they compare similarly to X-rated movies.” A Chicago branch of Fox News reported the ads to have influenced a particularly violent weekend in the city. Police reported, “36 people have been shot, 2 have been stabbed, and 9 people have consequently died in the city since Friday as a result of violent crime.” This isn’t the first time the companies ads have been pulled by the CTA as in 2004 Chicago’s governor protested similar inoffensive ads for GTA-Vice City Stories.

The ads were pulled without foreknowledge to the company. The CTA has been sued in a similar case in 2003 when the transit authority pulled “Change the Climate” ads. The CTA was sued on grounds of “viewpoint discrimination,” when refusing to run ads advocating debate of the legalization of marijuana. The US 1^st Circuit court ruled, “"[The] MBTA, a quasi-government agency, does not have the right to turn down advertisements based on the personal viewpoint of its executives."This article makes a very good point. Grand Theft Auto may be know for its mature game play but if its ads do not even portray mature content they shouldn’t be restricted from advertising. Rockstar games has as much right to advertise as any other company and the CTA can’t choose to not advertise a company if they don’t like them. The CTA provides a public service and the ads are targeted towards the public. The videogame audience is also more likely to meet an age group using public transportation so pulling the ads could hurt Rockstar games.