Kane & Lynch Ad Campaign Banned over Violence

To be honest, I had no idea that Eidos keeps advertising for Kane & Lynch since the public was kind of against the game following the Gerstman scandal last year. It seems that I was wrong and a serious ad campaign started to be held in the UK - however, not for a long time, since the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) decided to interfere.

According to the newspaper The Guardian, a "graphic" and "shocking" poster, press and television advertisement campaign for the Xbox version of the game has been banned by ASA, after receiving 26 complaints from the public who felt it glorified and condoned real violence, was distressing, offensive and "too shocking to be seen in an untargeted medium".

Ruling on the Kane & Lynch poster, which stated "Grittier and nastier in tone than anything you've seen before, the violence here is visceral, brutal and very, very real", the ASA said it was "likely to be seen as condoning and glorifying real violence" and was also irresponsible and "likely to cause serious or widespread offense". It seems that the people who complained were absolutely shocked to see the TV add which has, from a gamer's point of view, an absolutely hilarious description from the newspaper:

"One of the characters used the butt of his rifle as a club accompanied by the sound of a loud crunch, while another scene showed a man with a bloodied face apparently having his throat cut. [...] The ad continued with various scenes of acts of violence and chaos including shooting and people screaming and running in terror." Did you hear that? A third person shooter game where characters actually use guns and you can see blood! Eww! Disgusting!

Still, ASA decided to ban the campaign and Eidos had to stop even though they tried to defend themselves, stating that it wasn't their intention to "cause offence" and the TV ad was designed to be cinematic and not overly violent.

If you want to know our opinion about the PC version of Kane & Lynch, go check Softpedia's review here.