GameStop Employee Canned for RapeLay Comments?
Being interviewed for an article on RapeLay may have cost a GameStop employee his job.
GameStop employee Derek Littlejohn was interviewed for a piece on the controversial game which ran in the Point Park University publication The Globe. Littlejohn was quoted in the story stating, “I’ve both heard about and played RapeLay myself, and I find it as nothing more than a game.”
Littlejohn went on to offer some theories on Japanese culture before discussing banned games, saying, “It’s relatively easy to pirate these games, when all one has to do is type in the name of what they want and add ‘torrent.'" He added, "Usually, some sort of link turns up.”
GameRant claims LittleJohn, employed for about two years by GameStop in Oakland, was fired shortly after the article was published.
As noted in the article, Littlejohn could have been fired for calling RapeLay “nothing more than a game,” or for discussing game piracy, as GameRant wrote, “Having an employee, in print, note that, ‘it’s relatively easy to pirate these games,’ and then describe how to torrent them, necessarily runs counter to the very purpose of GameStop as a retail entity.”
The GameRant piece itself seems a bit split on the subject, understanding how GameStop might react to an employee commenting on such matters, but then serves up the following passage:
There is no indication that Littlejohn made any of the statements in the interview during a shift at GameStop. Is he not free to speak his mind on his own time? Whether we agree with him or not, the man has a right to his opinions.
GameStop did not respond to inquiries from GameRant.
GP: Simply identifying Littlejohn as an employee of a “large videogame retail chain” probably would have made everyone happy and saved his job.
