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Law & Order game pulled from UK stores

When there are reports of a video game being banned or pulled from store shelves, the adventure genre is not the first one that comes to mind. This time, however, an adventure game is involved, as Law & Order: Double or Nothing has been pulled from store shelves in Great Britain.

The game, which was originally released in 2003, contains a background photo depiction from the 1993 James Bulger murder. The image, taken from video footage recorded on a mall security camera, shows one of the two 10-year-old boys, later convicted of murder, leading the toddler out of the shopping mall and to his eventual torture and death. The use of this image had courted no controversy until the mother of the murdered toddler, Denise Fergus, noticed the image while playing the game recently.

Responding quickly and decisively after learning of Ms. Fergus' objection to the image, the game's UK distributor, Global Software Publishing, voluntarily removed the game from store shelves. In an official statement made by Ariella Lehrer, President and CEO of the game's developers, Legacy Interactive, an apology has been offered to the Bulger family, noting that the photo was inadvertently used by American artists not aware of its significance in the UK. Legacy has also offered a patch to remove the picture and said it would not use the picture in future copies of the game.

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