The Advertising Standards Authority in the UK has recently closed the door on the latest Kane & Lynch: Dead Men TV ad after receiving 26 complaints about it, most of which addressed an alarming depiction of violence towards women.

The committee found the ads to be irresponsible and likely to cause "serious or widespread offense," breaching responsible advertising and TV Advertising Standards codes.  An ASA adjudication stated, "The majority of the complainants believed (the) ad was offensive, because it included shocking images, which condoned violence, particularly towards women."

Eidos is arguing that the television ad was only aired after 9:00 pm, and printed ads were never meant to be seen by children.  Not surprisingly, Future Publishing has been forced into the fray, since one of the ads appeared in Edge magazine.  So far, the ASA seems pretty firm on their decision.

"Although we noted the image in the ads was not dissimilar to some of the images shown as part of the editorial content of Edge and Total Film magazines, we considered that the portrayal of violence it contained, with particular regard to the female hostage, was graphic and too shocking to be seen in any medium."

Apparently there's a vicious cycle of violent video game advertisements being produced, only to get bludgeoned by the ban-stick.  Rise and repeat.  Haven't they learned by now? 

No telling when the ads will be leaked though, so we can all see for ourselves.