On the one hand, Target Australia’s decision to stop selling Grand Theft Auto V in response to a large petition opposing its sale is not a confusing one. Target is not a specialty video game retailer. It’s a department store that sells a wide range of products, from family clothing to toys, and from home wares to sporting goods. Home entertainment is just a single slice of Target’s broad range of stock, and GTA V is but a single video game amongst presumably several thousand other games, Blu-rays, and DVDs.
Target Australia was presented with a petition of (at the time) close to 40,000 signatures (a number it has since exceeded). The language of the petition, which accuses the game of incentivising sexual violence against women, is misleading but I’ll touch on that in a moment. Focus on the number for now. It’s a large one. Too large for a business like Target to ignore, particularly after the petition was spotlighted on mainstream media and certainly not after the petition encouraged its supporters to contact Wesfarmers managing director Richard Goyder personally via his Twitter account. Target Australia is a subsidiary of Wesfarmers and Goyder is an ambassador for White Ribbon (active in more than 60 countries White Ribbon is the world’s largest male-led movement to end men’s violence against women).
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