PETA, the animal rights group, posted a blog post criticizing Zynga’s Mafia Wars for promoting cruelty to animals with its latest ‘animals’ update. The animals update allows players to bring animals along with them on their missions and can use them to attack other animals and people. It’s certainly something that happens in a lot of games, but just because it’s common doesn’t necessarily mean it’s right. What do you think about this? Let us know in the comments and read more after the jump.
Jennifer O’Connor was the writer at the PETA blog, and she explains that this is especially troublign because of a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision which struck down a law banning the distribution of videos glorifying animal fighting and cruelty. She goes ont o explain that pit bulls are one of the most abused dogs, partly because of their reputation as wild fighters. They are “frequently kept chained or penned, they are taunted and trained to be aggressive, and they are beaten and starved—sometimes to death.”
Jennifer also does explain that she is surprised that this move would come from Zynga who have been active in raising money for charities such as the San Francisco SPCA. The funny thing is that to raise that money, Zynga asks you to purchase bulldogs as friendly pets in their YoVille game. Jennifer asks Zynga to listen to their appeal and remove the fighting bulldogs from their game. She also asks readers to leave polite comments asking Zynga to leave fighting animals out of the game, as well. What do you think?
