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'What this video game needs is actual footage of real gruesome deaths'

Animal rights group wants input into design of Farming Simulator 17

Protests about video games usually call for less violence. But People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has called for more violence - and more graphic violence – in the forthcoming Farming Simulator 17.

PETA's beef with developer GIANTS Software GmbH stems from the promise that pig farming would debut in the game's new version.

The lobby group thinks that the developer has an obligation to depict the swine-herding experience with complete verisimilitude, including pigs being slaughtered by being “hung upside down, stabbed, and dropped into scalding-hot water.”

“To do anything else would be dishonest" says PETA's Harriet Barclay, who has penned a letter (PDF) to GIANTS Software offering even nastier details about the pig-farming industry. The letter suggests the developer source video from abattoirs and include that in the game.

“Farming 17 should solely simulate crop farming, in which no animals are confined, beaten, or slaughtered,” Barclay writes, “turning Farming 17 into Vegan Farming 17.”

In other words, watching the grass grow. And just as entertaining, as the trailer below depicting the the game's “From Seeds to Harvest” module demonstrates.

Youtube Video

Farming Simulator 17 has scored a 3 in the PEGI European game ratings scheme so is deemed suitable for kids of all ages. PEGI 3 permits “Some violence in a comical context” so long as it is clear to even very young children that everything on screen is a fantasy. The PEGI 18 rating is the scheme's highest and covers “depictions of violence that would make the viewer feel a sense of revulsion.”

The Register imagines abattoir footage would take the simulator from a 3 to an 18 after moment or two of footage and that GIANTS Software will therefore be ignoring PETA's suggestions. ®

Bootnote FWIW, last night your correspondent tucked into a stew flavoured with both bacon and chorizo.

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