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The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has decided that Konami cannot display an ad for their upcoming game, Crime Life: Gang Wars. The ad appeared in the London edition of the Metro and depicted five black men standing in the street toting weapons including guns, a baseball bat, and a hammer. The ad read “rule the streets or fall by the wayside.”
The ASA is an independent body set up by the advertising industry to make sure everyone is following UK advertising codes. The group found the ad “offensive and irresponsible.”
Konami argued that the men were members of the hip hop group D12 and that they had approved the image. Yet, the ASA believed that “some readers may not understand that the men in the ad represented the band members and could take the image to be a negative portrayal of black men and be offended by it on those grounds.” They also believe the tagline “could be seen to condone violence and present that choice of lifestyle as aspirational in a way that was irresponsible.”