Norwegian Retailers Coop and Platekompaniet Pull Games in Wake of Attacks

A number of newspaper reports are saying that two of the biggest video game retailers in Norway have pulled a number of video games from their shelves as a direct results of the terrorist attack that took place in the country and resulted in 77 people being killed at a youth political camp.

It seems that the titles that have been pulled from shelves include the Call of Duty series, Homefront, Counter-Strike Source, Sniper Ghost Warriors and other first-person shooters but also the MMO World of Warcraft, the most popular on the market.

Coop seems to have more than 1,000 locations across the country.

Geir Inge Stokke, who is the retail director working at Coop Norway, has stated “The decision to remove the games was made around the time we realized the scope of the attack.”

The executive added, “Others are better suited than us, to point to the negative effects of games like these. At the moment it’s for us to take them down. I wouldn’t be surprised if others do the same. We have to think very carefully about when to bring these goods back. The economy involved is of no importance.”

The manifesto published by the attacker in Norway contained references to both Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and to World of Warcraft, but no one has established a clear link between his video game preferences and his terrorist actions.

Since the attacks the Norvegian police has established that Anders Behring Breivik, the 32-year old Norwegian right wing extremist, has been acting alone and his lawyer has suggested that he was crazy and not in complete control of his actions.

Unfortunately, the move to remote a number of video games from store shelves might seem like a way for the industry to acknowledge that it is in someway linked to the terror attacks, something that might be used against it in the coming months.