PETA Calls Foul On Battlefield 3

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Legions of people have been enjoying Battlefield 3 in all of its competitive multiplayer glory for the past couple of weeks, but there’s one group of people that doesn’t like the kind of content that Battlefield 3 has to offer. No, no, we’re not talking about Modern Warfare 3 fanboys (though they probably have nothing nice to say about Battlefield 3 either) – we’re talking about PETA.

PETA? Yes, PETA. It’s back at it again, hunting down depictions of animal cruelty in video games and then complaining about whatever it finds very loudly and obnoxiously. So, what is it this time? Does a dog gets shot by soldiers in the middle of a firefight? Perhaps a kitty cat found itself in the wrong place at the wrong time and gets run over by a tank? Nope! In fact, PETA is calling foul over the death of a rat.

Apparently, there’s a portion of the game’s third mission in the single player campaign that allows players to run a rat through with their combat knife. PETA published its complaint on its German website, which was translated by the Battlefield 3 Blog:

The realistic computer game Battlefield 3 treats animals in a sadistic manner. The game gives players the option to kill a rat with a combat knife in the back in order to then lift it by its tail, then toss it away. Killing virtual animals can have a brutalizing effect on the young male target audience. There have been repeated cases of animal cruelty in Germany, where young people kill animals. Inspiration behind these acts often came from movies and computer games.

I’m not really sure what this complaint is meant to accomplish. Do we keep people from killing rats, when killing rats is actually a good thing? After all, rats carry all kinds of diseases, so what’s really the point of keeping them around, or going into some kind of moral outrage in an effort to actually preserve the rats of the world?

In any case, PETA is a pretty ridiculous group without its condemnation of video games, so I’m not surprised that they’ve moved onto being pissed off over a virtual rat being killed. What do you think? Does PETA have a case, or is this just plain weird? Head down to the comments section to sound off about this admittedly strange story.