Source: Military-based GameStop stores will not carry Medal of Honor

by Andrew Yoon on Sep 2nd 2010 4:40PM

EA's upcoming Medal of Honor reboot has attracted some controversy due to the inclusion of Taliban fighters in the game's multiplayer mode. A source has informed Joystiq that, in response to the backlash, GameStop stores in Army and Air Force bases will not stock the game. According to the notice sent to employees, "GameStop has agreed out of respect for our past and present Men and Women in uniform we will not carry Medal of Honor in any of our AAFES based stores." The notice specifically mentions playable Taliban fighters as cause for the pullback.

The affected stores will have "all marketing material pulled" and will no longer take reservations for the game. While the move showcases GameStop's sensitivity to the hot-topic issue, stores are nonetheless encouraged to direct buyers to a non-military store. "Customers who enter our AAFES stores and wish to reserve Medal of Honor can and should be directed to the nearest GameStop location off base," the note explains.

The full statement can be read after the break.

GameStop internal memo:

"GameStop has agreed out of respect for our past and present Men and Women in uniform we will not carry Medal of Honor in any of our AAFES based stores. At this time it does not include our 4 stores on Marine Installations. GameStop fully supports AAFES in this endeavor and is sensitive to the fact that in multiplayer mode, one side will assume the role of Taliban fighters. As such, GameStop agreed to have all marketing material pulled by noon today, and to stop taking reservations. Customers who enter our AAFES stores and wish to reserve Medal of Honor can and should be directed to the nearest GameStop location off base. Again we appreciate the sensitivity, and know our AAFES based stores will continue to honor the great customer base in which they serve."

Tags: aafes, gamestop, medal-of-honor, Medal-of-Honor-2010, microsoft, military, pc, playstation, ps3, xbox

Reader Comments (112)

I think the bigger news here is "Military bases have Gamestop stores"

@Nolan North

Beat me to it.

Also, how is this any different from the "No Russian" mission? Plus you aren't even doing any killing as the Taliban, if I read correctly. There are a million games where you can play, and kill, as Nazis. What's the big deal here?

@(Unverified) those were random ass unnamed Russians....I mean ALL Russians arent bad....but all Taliban are....aren't they?

@Nolan North Stupid question. Are they staffed by military personnel or fat jackholes like me?

@Chris DPSN AggieCEO XBLThe Aggi

Dude, we all know the war in the middle east is illegal anyways.

We got our boys getting their asses kicked with weapons Russia made 20 years ago -_-

@Nolan North

If I were a console gamer, this would indeed be a huge issue for me, as the closest gamestop is on a military base, and the second closest is about an hour away.

I love Steam.

@DarrylKensley
Try 60 year old designs.

@Kinjiro

haha just ignore me I got my dates mixed up. Im living in the 60s still! ;)

@Nolan North

I really don't understand why people are so surprised that gamestops are on military bases.
We also have numerous fast food restaurants, Phone Carriers, and lots of other things.

Soldiers and Families live on these bases, that's why we have this stuff on them. Why should they have to go off base every time they need something when there's room on base for everything they need?

@Nolan North
@DarrylKensley

Getting their asses kicked?!? Are you kidding me you schmuck?!?

@(Unverified) My father is in the Air Force, but the bases have a lot of stores likes that in them. Also the AAFES stores carry video games as well.

@Jawmuncher The GameStops can even lure in family members with the "no sales tax".

@thelolotov I think their issue is a bit more important/relevant than a group of guys having to travel a bit further for 1 specific game anways.

@DarrylKensley

They're hardly getting their asses kicked. :P In COD terms, the US's K/D is no doubt WAYYYYY higher then the bad guys' over there.

@Nolan North Not if you are one of the many fine servicemen or their families which turns out to be several million people. We also have Starbucks, Burger King, etc. This isn't Vietnam. We take a piece of America with us where ever we go.

@(Unverified) I don't think it's fair to compare this game with Nazi's (our enemies in a 70-year -old conflict, who have become our generations go-to-boogey man) and The Actual Taliban in Actual Afghanistan. There's a reason they stock Call of Duty, but are refusing to carry this game. It's a bit too on-the-nose for their comfort.

I will be picking up MoH, but I question the wisdom and the artistic wisdom of having it literally be about the war we're actually in now. There's no elegance or metaphor to such a plain-faced presentation. Inception cannot happen unless you go deeper ;).

@Nolan North

If I were a console gamer, this would indeed be a huge issue for me, as the closest gamestop is on a military base, and the second closest is about an hour away.

I love Steam.

@(Unverified)
Whats the big deal? The war in Afghanistan is still on-going, thats the big deal. We're not talking about Nazi Gemany sixty years removed from the conflict. The Taliban exists today, they are fighting against collition forces, and our guys & gals are dying in substancial numbers. Just last week over 20 US soldiers were killed over there.

No, this game-type isn't like "killin Nazi's" or the generic "No-Russian" level. Its referencing real people and real-time war events.

I don't know about you people but I see straight through this BS. EA is capitalizing and sensationalizing a very serious, real, and current event. Tasteless EA. And just when I was beginning to respect you.

@BigD145

Wrong. Gamestop has sales tax on base. The only places that don't are AAFES stores. Everything else is just a vendor, and AAFES gets a percentage of their fees. I swear to God in my store we have new release games on day 1 for $60. People go to the Gamestop 50 feet outside the store and spend $66 with tax instead of buying it at the damn PX/BX.

@(Unverified)

Let's see, Modern Warfare 2's campaign was completely fictional and had only a hazy, "Bond movie" style correlation to reality.

Medal of Honor on the other hand is set in a real war, with American, British, Canadian and other coalition forces fighting Taliban and other insurgents. And you can play as the Taliban and shoot coalition soldiers with AK-47s virtually.

A legal disaster is inbound for this game. It's one thing to be shooting generic Middle Eastern guys/Russians in a fictional Middle Eastern state/Soviet breakaway republic, and quite another to just decide to model your shoot-em-up on an ongoing and extremely controversial conflict.

@Verrier
Oh, kind of like The Hurt Locker and Jarhead movies? And that other one with Jamie Foxx?
It's Freedom of Speech. They can make it and I'm sure most people wouldn't care. They're just afraid of the sensitive ones. Most guys in the military like games like CoD, MoH, and the such. They won't care if it has Taliban.

@Themoreyouknow

The reason most people I know went to GameStop instead of the BX/PX is that their selection sucked. Most games weren't available on the date they were released or they only had a few of a big title that were gone shortly after release. The BX I went to just started moving the current gen games front and center about a year ago. Before that, the PS2 and Xbox 1 games were prominently displayed with the PS3 and 360 games on a shelf to the side. This is at Eglin, which is the largest base in the world (land wise). AAFES just doesn't keep up with gaming unless you don't care about older stuff.

they aren't being TOO sensitive....they are still going to sell it....

thats like a known molester catholic priest saying "I will not be teaching at this all boy school anymore, but I will keep teaching one on one with boys in the chapel"

Seems kinda knee-jerk to me. So we can't have games with current military factions in it?

@Breakdown yea I dont see the big deal either....and from the looks of things the Taliban will always be around....so unlike WW2 or Vietnam games which have enemies that are no longer our enemies....the Taliban will always be our enemy and thereby...controversial...sad really....

@Breakdown
Well, it's in poor taste, but I'm not convinced that it's in poorer taste than No Russian or, say, any game that glorifies gang violence. I am, however, convinced that it's in far poorer taste than Six Days in Fallujah would've been.

@Breakdown
Poor taste? Tell the families of 600,000+ dead Iraqis that games where US soldiers mow down arabs are in good taste!

I don't think playing either side is actually offensive but the US (and my native Britain - one of the dumbest quotes was from our defence secretary) are pretty arrogant and jingoistic to assume that the Taliban are the bad guys, and that playing as them is wrong.

This isn't trying to be flamebait, I'm just asking - what precisely makes it alright to kill one side and not the other? We're all humans.

@Breakdown

WE have Russians, MEC, Chinese - invading the US in BF2. It's not like EA made you able to play the SS rounding up Jews and such.

@Haggard Holy crap. Read a newspaper. The US uses targeted attacks on the enemy which happened to be mostly foreign fighters not Iraqis. The vast, vast, vast majority of those deaths were suicide bombers, death squads, and kidnappers intimidating the Iraqi populous to get them to do what, not vote, and not cooperate with us. How many years has it been since the wars started and you are that uneducated? FOr your sake I hope you are Canadian or something. If you are American, that's just sad.

@shadowskill11
But the newspapers are controlled by the, like, corporations, man. That's why you gotta get all your news from Democracy Now, or otherwise just complain about the evil capitalist bigwigs without knowing what the hell you're talking about.

Put in plainer terms, yes, we're all humans, but some humans go out of their way to terrorize and kill civilians, while others attempt to use organized military tactics to root out military targets while causing as little harm to civilians as possible, even if, sadly, they do not always succeed. Not trying to be a fist-pumping American here, because America and the American military do plenty of stupid shit, but if you honestly believe that the U.S. military and the Taliban are on even moral ground, you are either incredibly naive or astonishingly stupid.

@shadowskill11
You know, if everybody had the same views, nobody would have anything to talk about. As I actually said in the text (which you surely read, in order to criticise) I'm British, but I don't see why you expect Americans to be more pro-war.

I admit that I shouldn't be comparing the Taliban to us on moral ground - I went through a lot of heavy editing of my point and I guess I didn't think about the part of cruelty to women, brutal murders of kidnap victims and civilian bombings.

The point I really believe in though, is why is it OK to play as one side of foot soldiers murdering opposing foot soldiers but not the other way around. I'm sure the majority of people killed in the war - on EITHER side - don't believe in abject cruelty or the horrific ways that some people in the fundamentalist Islam camp go about securing their political objectives. I'm an atheist, but I think every person is 'sacred' unless there's more good to come from stopping them than the evil of that act. Each person has an incredible inner mental world, a bag of hopes, dreams, fears, emotions, opinions, hobbies, friendships and likes. When somebody puts a bullet, AC-130 shell or cruise missile through that brain, it's over.

I hope you treat this more as food for thought than a liberal spewing crap. I'm just interested in debate, not insults.

@Haggard
Alright, now you're talking sense. Yes, the taking of a human life (in the real world), even if it is justified (i.e. a life-or-death situation) is never something to celebrate, and it is never "cool". Likewise, war is sometimes a necessary evil, but that doesn't change the fact that it is a terrible thing that takes or ruins lives in multitude. I actually do find this new trend of "realistic" war games to be quite distasteful on those grounds, although I figure that if a developer is going to turn real-life war into a game, they might as well go all the way and make both sides playable. If done right, maybe Western players could actually get some insight into who "the enemy" is and why they're fighting, without condoning or excusing the methods that these people use. When I first heard about No Russian, I was actually intrigued - I thought Infinity Ward was forcing players to become the person we fear, and had they been uncompromising and interested in saying something of merit with their game, they could have done a number of truly interesting things with that. Of course, in the end they just ended up exploiting it for spectacle, and I suspect Medal of Honor will do the same.
Anyway, my point is I agree with you that video games in general, but particularly war games, often fail to appreciate the moral and emotional gravity of war and of the taking of human life. I'd like to see that change.

@Haggard
That said, it's still just a game, and people of appropriate age should be able to obtain and play it if that's what they want to do. I kind of understand the reasoning behind Gamestop's move, but it's still idiotic and will likely cause more people to be inconvenienced than it will avert people being offended.

I don't understand this, they are only affecting their costumers. Hopefully gamestop stores are as close as in the city i live in, we have two gamestops across the street.

This is stupid.

Dya think they dont sell COD or Bad Company in Eastern Europe or Russia?

I hope GameStop stops selling Company of Heroes on military bases since you can play as the Nazis in the multiplayer. And surely Nazis are worse than the Taliban, no?

I uhhhhh think u forgot the guns that WE gave them as well....

Hyper sensitive America. Grow some balls again.

@C1 Yea dude, seriously. Shit is pitiful. Feels embarrassing to live in the country sometimes, the way they treat our soldiers is disgusting. I still can't believe at one point, Congress tried to pass a bill stating that soldiers were going to have to pay for their own Medicare. Luckily it was denied. Jesus Christ, it's ridiculous man.

@JCob

You should see the insane restrictions countries like Australia get on games.

I personally never understood Invading other countries to HELP them... :S

@DarrylKensley

Say what you want about the current occupation of certain countries now, but making a blanket statement like that only shows your lack of critical thinking.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Allied_invasion_of_Germany

@DarrylKensley

I personally never understood flying commercial airliners into public buildings. Are you confusing Afghanistan with Iraq or are you just that stupid?

Can someone tell me how this makes any sense at all?

So let me get this straight:

They can GET PAID to shoot the Taliban in real life,

but now they CAN'T even PAY to shoot them in video games?

Hrrmm.....

I thought it was more along the lines of having to play as them, not against them.

@Haelie
Yeah, nobody really has a problem with wanton killing in video games if a white and/or American guy is responsible for it.

@Startingline13 ArmlessOctopus

You didn't get it straight.

This is just a game people. It means no disrespect.

It's just entertainment.

So much for that American freedom we keep hearing about. I think soldiers can make up their own minds whether or not they want to buy the game. We shouldn't have to tell them what to do, especially with the sacrifices they already have to endure. They're disciplined soldiers, you're telling me they can't handle a video game? It's cool, if it's shooting other soldiers and unarmed civilians in COD:MW2. Where's the logic? I swear man, people need to check themselves before they wreck themselves.

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Medal of Honor (2010)

Source: Military-based GameStop stores will not carry Medal of Honor

Reader Comments (112)

Posted: Sep 2nd 2010 4:42PM Nolan North said

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