10 DUMBEST Video Game Controversies That Went Too Far

Though PETA is a respectable organisation on the surface, it does have a habit of taking things way too seriously in the gaming realm.

Case in point: a press release that was issued in November 2011, in which PETA's German branch condemned Battlefield 3 for a sequence that allowed the player to stab a rat, pick it up by the tail, and toss it to one side.

The vast majority of players won't have thought twice about this moment (in a game where you can murder thousands of humans, why would you?), but PETA declared it would have a "brutalizing effect on the young male target audience."

Hammering home just how out of touch it is with the gaming scene, PETA then concluded by wheeling out that age-old, eyeroll-worthy "video games cause real-life violence" argument, which didn't help its case.

As you'd expect, this "controversy" received a ton of press, overblowing what was ultimately a nothing moment in the game. In fact, all PETA did was encourage even more people to talk about the rat scene - which mostly consisted of gamers making jokes at PETA's expense.