Take-Two president slams retailers banning the sale of GTA 5

Last week, two Australian retail stores — Kmart Australia and Target Australia — removed Grand Theft Auto 5 from the shelves in response to a consumer petition protesting the game's depictions of violence against women.

While Take-Two Interactive's CEO Strauss Zelnick issued a fairly measured statement expressing disappointment in the decision, company president Karl Slatoff was much more animated in his response — slamming the retailers' decision and calling it a "dangerous and slippery slope to go down."

"It's one thing for someone to not want to buy a piece of content, which is completely understandable," Slatoff said during a presentation at BMO Capital Markets 2014 Technology & Digital Media Conference (via Gamesindustry). "And that's really the solution. If you don't like it and it's offensive to you, then you don't buy it."

"But for a person or a group of people to try to make that decision for millions of people… We have 34 million people who bought Grand Theft Auto, and if these folks had their way, none of those people would be able to buy Grand Theft Auto. And that really just flies in the face of everything that free society is based on," he continued.

"It's the freedom of expression, and to try to squelch that is a dangerous and slippery slope to go down. So it's really more disappointing for us in that regard than it is in the context of our business. Our business is going to be completely unaffected by this; it doesn't make a difference to us. At the end of the day though, it's not something you want because it's a poor leadership decision," he said.

Although the publisher's sales of GTA 5 shouldn't be affected too much by these retailers' decisions, the precedent that this move sets can be much more problematic in the long run. Whereas consumers used to speak with their wallets, it now appears an individual's decisions are now being made for them by retailers caving into the demands of a group of people determining what's appropriate for everyone.