Apology Issue To James Bulger's Family

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Games publisher Legacy Interactive has issued a public apology to the family of James Bulger for including an image of the murdered toddler in PC title Law and Order: Double or Nothing.

In a statement, the firm said: "Legacy Interactive sends our most heartfelt apology to the family of James Bulger for the inadvertent use of a background photo in our Law and Order game.

"The image was included in the game years ago and without any knowledge of the crime, which occurred in the UK and was minimally publicised in the United States."

The row broke out over a still CCTV image of Bulger, which was recorded in The Strand shopping centre, Merseyside, and appears on a bulletin board within the game.

James Bulger's mother Denise Fergus wrote to Legacy Interactive demanding that the image be removed.

In response, the firm has now issued a downloadable patch available from legacyinteractive.com, which will eliminate the photo. The company also confirmed the image will be removed from any future printings of the game.

This is good to see and the publisher has done the right thing and should take some credit for that.

Lets hope other games publishers take the same moral initiative when faced with similar circumstances in the future.

Digital Spy Report

This is good to see and the publisher has done the right thing and should take some credit for that.

Lets hope other games publishers take the same moral initiative when faced with similar circumstances in the future.

Digital Spy Report [/quote]
yeh they have appologised and withdrawn the game, but they should never have done this in the first place, its just totally disrespectful to the family and poor james to have done it. And no apology should be good enough It was just plain wrong !

I think its true though that the publisher didnt know. Believe it or not matey, the UK is pretty much insignificant in world affairs and has been since the 60's.

Despite what the news stations were ranting on about "it shook the world" at the time of the death, it got VERY little news coverage in the US, people wernt aware of it.

The game iirc was only realeased in the NTSC region (US and Canada), so i bet almost all people who played the game, except for the odd one or two, didnt even notice the image.

The developers themselves hadnt realised the significance of the image until recently.

maybe so mate, but they will have known it was real cctv footage of a child being abducted and being led away to his death when they got hold of it, they not soft, just interested in shock value and money to be made from the game..

Not if its a media royalty free image they wont have

At the end of the day they have done the right thing, removed the image from all future prints and released a new patch which removes it from existing copies. They have also issued a sincere apology to his family, which the family have reportedly accepted.

fair do's matey, it just peed me off, free or not, they must have known wot it was from,

Its because we all know straight away when we see the image what it is, and it pulls at our heart strings. As I say though, its not something that widely recognisable outside of the UK.

When I first red the report (on the Fox News website) I was totally peed off too that they had put it in the game. But after reading other news reports, as well as discussion about it and the companies quick response after being notified of the offending image, it gradually dawned on me that they may not be so guilty after all.

I know companies do allsorts to make a quick profit, but to be blunt I cant see any company wanting to make a quick buck by using an image of a 2yr old that was murdered being led away by his murderers for financial gain, more due to a mistake and a very stupid on on their part (for not finding out what the image was related to, which is quite easy for them to miss as they have hundreds, maybe thousands of images on the royalty free cd's and they just choose one at random or that suits the game, most of the time without looking as to what significance it carries).

see ur point mate, just majorly stupid oversight....

All I can say with regards the original printing, is they are extremely lucky it wasnt a major UK publication, or there would have been all hell break loose against them.