EA removes weapons companies’ link from Medal of Honor Warfighter website

With the recent blame of gun violence in the United States put on video games and entertainment by the NRA, the last thing you want is links to firearms manufacturers on your game's website. That's exactly why Electronic Arts removed links of weapon companies from the Medal of Honor Warfighter website. A 'virtual showroom' linked Medal of Honor Warfighter to real-life products from its gun-making partners. The New York Times said that the video games and firearms industries have "quietly forged a mutually beneficial marketing relationship."

Warfighter's site displayed information for McMillan Group and Magpul, allowing visitors to browse guns, knives and combat gear that is featured in Medal of Honor Warfighter. Now, the logos and descriptions exist, but the links have been removed. EA representative Jeff Brown said, "We felt it was inappropriate and took the links down," and that the publisher took action after learning of the links to its partners' online catalogs.

The New York Times article goes into fine detail on the partnership between video games and gun manufacturers — the most recent being Black Ops II featuring models made by Barrett and Browning.

I think it's quite obvious that we will see less and less marketing and linkage between video games and firearms manufacturers, especially in the wake of Sandy Hook. I'm not one of the people who think that video games and the violence in them is the cause of school shootings, but I would say that linking to real guns and websites is not a good idea for a more 'realistic' and modern shooter. There's no reason that video games should be bragging that they have the complete likeness of actual firearms and then have a link that a teen can click on. Good move for EA, but it might be too little too late. It seems like every time a violent act happens, everyone has it out for video games. The violent culture that exists in the US breeds video games that other countries play, yet we don't see the same amount of gun violence elsewhere. It's not the video games… let's just get that straight.

I'm out before I go on another rant about this.

You can follow Senior Editor Lance Liebl on Twitter @Lance_GZ. He likes talking sports, video games, movies, and the stupidity of celebrities. Email at LLiebl@GameZone.com

[New York Times]