Players of ‘Red Dead Redemption 2’ have been criticised for uploading videos of themselves beating up and killing a suffragette character.
The highly-anticipated video game, which came out in late October to massive critical acclaim, has been praised for its extraordinary attention to detail.
Players can talk to, abuse, rob, or kill anyone they meet in the virtual world and after the game’s release, YouTuber ‘Shirrako’ uploaded a video called ‘Red Dead Redemption 2 – Beating Up Annoying Feminist’, which has been viewed more than 1.5m times.
In the short video, the player’s character listens to the pitch of a suffragette who is campaigning in the fictional city of Saint Denis about giving women the right to vote. He then proceeds to punch her, knocking her out.
The game is set in 1899, 20 years before the passage of the nineteenth amendment giving women the right to vote in the USA.
Many of the comments underneath the video support the player’s actions.
“You could take this small portion of the game, stretch it to full AAA game length, charge me $60 for it, and I’d pre-order it with a season pass,” said user Silly Goose.
Joker Productions wrote: “I killed that lady too. Every time I went to the tailor right there I had to listen to her yapping. Got fed up so I took her to lunch... except the only thing served was buckshot.”
Other users said: “Why can’t we do this in real life?” and “I was on the fence about this game, now I know I have to buy it.”
‘Shirrako’ followed up their initial video with footage showing the player’s character kidnapping the same suffragette with a lasso and throwing her down a crevasse, sparking concerned reactions from many viewers.
Emanuel Cheeseberg, managing editor of technology site Motherboard, tweeted: “This is a complicated problem with detailed, open world games that prioritize [sic] player choice. What’s not complicated is that there’s a reservoir of video game players who hate women and get off on this.”
The Guardian’s video game editor, Keza MacDonald, tweeted: “Truly the most depressing thing I’ve read in ages: idiot YouTuber beats suffragette to death in-game, gets 1.5m views and hundreds of supportive comments.”
Read Dead Redemption 2′s maker, Rockstar games, has be criticised in the past for players abusing the liberal amounts of freedom they have in open worlds games.
In 2013, players filmed themselves having sex with prostitutes and then killing them on ‘Grand Theft Auto 5’.
Game-makers have since made efforts to stop players abusing freedoms during play, with Rockstar making it impossible to attack children in their games.
The company has been approached for comment.