by Andrew Moran

Created on: March 05, 2013

The animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) issued a statement Monday that lambasted Ubisoft for its new video game “Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag.” PETA representatives are complaining that players are permitted to hunt whales in the new video game’s open seas.

Although it is historically correct, PETA is upset that the practice of whaling is allowed and even celebrated in a game, which is set in the year 1715 and in the three areas of Kingston, Nassau and Florida, that is expected to generate huge sales.

“Whaling—that is, shooting whales with harpoons and leaving them to struggle for an hour or more before they die or are hacked apart while they are still alive—may seem like something out of the history books, but this bloody industry still goes on today in the face of international condemnation, and it’s disgraceful for any game to glorify it,” the organization said in a statement issued to VentureBeat. “PETA encourages video game companies to create games that celebrate animals—not games that promote hurting and killing them.”

Gamemaker Ubisoft has yet to respond to the concerns grieved by PETA. It hasn’t also been confirmed if the company will remove the act of whaling from gameplay. The game is scheduled for a release date of October this year.

PETA has issued complaints in the past regarding certain scenes in video games. In 2009, PETA was worried over the issue of clubbing seals in the demo of the game “Overlord II.” Two years later, PETA again vented that the Mario video game character used the skin of a raccoon to gain superpowers.

The organization has also recently come out against Pokemon for its depiction of characters “as unfeeling objects and used for such things as human entertainment and as subjects in experiments.”

“The amount of time that Pokemon spend stuffed in pokeballs is akin to how elephants are chained up in train carts, waiting to be let out to 'perform' in circuses," the organisation wrote on its website. "But the difference between real life and this fictional world full of organized animal fighting is that Pokémon games paint rosy pictures of things that are actually horrible.”

As of this time, the only gamemaker to actually alter one of its games because of PETA is Zynga, which was to remove a pitbull fighting scene in its popular Facebook game “Mafia Wars.”

There are a handful of other games that include violence against animals. VideoGamer.com reports that “Tomb Raider” allows users to hunt wildlife, while “Crysis 3” lets players punch squirrels.

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