Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Star Wars: Daily Star Apologises To Rockstar

By John Walker on July 24th, 2010 at 11:55 am.

If I were any better at Photoshop I'd be working for a tabloid.

Heavens above. Rockstar has them some lawyers. You may remember that last week the Daily Star ran an absolutely ridiculous story in which they claimed that Rockstar were to release Grand Theft Auto: Rothbury, based on the events of Raoul Moat, the murder he committed, and his run from the police. You can see the full article, subsequently pulled from the Daily Star site, after Alec had the foresight to screengrab it. Yoinking the story from their site wasn’t really enough – it had spread like wildfire across the web, and it seems Rockstar aren’t the sorts to mess with like that. They’ve got money. They’ve got lawyers. I have never seen an apology like the one on the Star’s site today.

The story was patently ridiculous, and demonstrated that even a newspaper as poorly regarded (by us, at least, legal fans) as the Star hasn’t spent enough time in the bowels of the internet to have picked up on the meme of creating fake GTA box covers. That this particular cover was so poor again didn’t seem to raise a flag for them. And that’s what makes their apology so very special. Rockstar has goosed them so hard that they’ve got the Star mocking itself for its appalling journalism in its own apology.

“We made no attempt to check the accuracy of the story before publication and did not contact Rockstar Games prior to publishing the story. We also did not question why a best selling and critically acclaimed fictional games series would choose to base one of their most popular games on this horrifying real crime event.”

Pow. An extraordinary thing to write in your own newspaper.

“It is now accepted that there were never any plans by Rockstar Games to publish such a game and that the story was false. We apologise for publishing the story using a mock-up of the game cover, our own comments on the matter and soliciting critical comments from a grieving family member.”

And that’s the awful part of this story. In a typical gutterpress fashion, rather than contacting Rockstar, or even anyone in the industry who might know, they went straight to (Moat’s ex-girlfriend and gunshot victim) Samatha Stobbart’s grandmother for comment.

“We unreservedly apologise to Rockstar Games and we have undertaken not to repeat the claims again. We have also agreed to pay them a substantial amount in damages which they are donating to charity.”

We’ll presumably have to wait until the next Private Eye before we can get a clue how much that substantial amount was.

The author of this article, Jerry Lawton, had previously expressed confusion as to why the story had raised so much ire. As reported by Destructoid, in their inimitable fashion, Lawton wrote on his Facebook page:

“Baffled by the fury of adult gamers. These are grown (?!?) men who sit around all day playing computer games with one another who’ve today chosen to enter the real world just long enough to complain about my story slamming a Raoul Moat version of Grand Theft Auto! You would think I’d denied the Holocaust!!! Think I’ll challenge them to a virtual reality duel….stab….I win!!!”

Because presumably he couldn’t think of anything more unpleasant or inappropriate to have written. Anyhow, it’ll be interesting to find out if he’s still feeling in such a winning mood this morning.

__________________

« | »

, , .

99 Comments »

  1. 24/07/2010 at 11:57 Freud says:

    I kind of expected a “The reporter responsible for the mistake has been severely beaten” towards the end.

  2. 24/07/2010 at 12:03 ChaosSmurf says:

    I’d play GTA: Daily Star, the epic story of one man’s attempt to look like a total prat.

  3. 24/07/2010 at 12:04 Antsy says:

    Bunch of useless twats that they are.

    And for the benefit of Daily Star readers who have randomly clicked their way here…

    YOU AM AN TWATS!

  4. 24/07/2010 at 12:07 Robert says:

    I might be wrong here, but isn’t comparing stuff to WW2 if you wrong the trademark move of a sweat teenager on the internet? At the very least it is bad taste; maybe HE should enter the real world now and then. And look at grieving people, and treat them like people in instead of virtual subjects.

  5. 24/07/2010 at 12:09 Bindibadgi says:

    Agreed!

    If the Star (“paper”) print pictures of a flayed Jerry Lawton, I might actually consider buying it. Please say R* lawyers demanded he was flayed. Or at least kicked in the balls several times. That would be delightful.

    • 24/07/2010 at 12:48 battles_atlas says:

      What do you mean you ‘might consider buying it’? Are you cognitively disabled?

    • 24/07/2010 at 12:51 battles_atlas says:

      Surely you mean ‘if everything about the Daily Star was the opposite of what it is, including the expectation that you give them money to read it, then I might consider buying it’.

    • 24/07/2010 at 13:24 DJ Phantoon says:

      Well if they gave you money for taking it, it would hardly be buying would it?

      Also, I assume he’s not as familiar with The Daily Star as you are. If so, why so grating? They look like a tabloid to me, as they have the same exact layout as all the other ones. Is it significantly worse?

    • 24/07/2010 at 15:02 Heliocentric says:

      Replace ‘buy’ with ‘stand in newsagent reading and then reshelf’.

    • 24/07/2010 at 15:06 Heliocentric says:

      I find ‘the star’ less offensive than say ‘the daily mail’ because ‘the star’ is so openly a joke. Unfortunately many of its actual readers don’t realise that.

      “We are the angry mob, we read the papers everyday. We like who they like we hate who they hate”

    • 24/07/2010 at 20:42 Daniel Rivas says:

      Hmm. Of the Desmond papers, the Express is probably the more odious.

      But yeah, they’re all quite alike.

  6. 24/07/2010 at 12:10 Bindibadgi says:

    Damnit, my reply was to Freud. Forgot to click the right button.

  7. 24/07/2010 at 12:14 SpinalJack says:

    LOL best ‘news’ I’ve heard all day XD
    (granted, I just got up… but still)

  8. 24/07/2010 at 12:15 Garbled Zombie says:

    “We also did not question why a best selling and critically acclaimed fictional games series would choose to base one of their most popular games on this horrifying real crime event.”

    Sounds like they didn’t even bother proofreading their apology, Grand Theft Auto is not a “fictional game series”, it’s a real game series.

  9. 24/07/2010 at 12:15 Orange says:

    The Star took a fully deserved kicking there. A grovelling apology and substantial damages. Chances of them improving their standards and learning from it? About 1%.

    • 24/07/2010 at 17:43 Zogtee says:

      Agreed.

      Still, I wonder what exactly went down between Rock* and the Daily Star, because that is an epic apology, where they literally say they lied and didn’t bother to check anything. Rock* are really rubbing the Star’s face in the shit here and it is disturbing that Lawton doesn’t appear to even understand what the problem is, which suggests that they do this sort of thing all the time, they just happened to get caught here.

    • 25/07/2010 at 07:39 Harlander says:

      They do do this all the time. All the tabloids do.

      Tabloid Watch

      It’s like they care more about getting circulation through sensationalism than actually reporting, but that’s madness, right?

      Right?

      Guys?

  10. 24/07/2010 at 12:21 The Hammer says:

    Ahhh, good to see a Richard Desmond rag eating humble pie. What a load of cockends they are.

  11. 24/07/2010 at 12:24 Dreaded Walrus says:

    I like the button that says More ‘news’ here.

  12. 24/07/2010 at 12:38 Out Reach says:

    I wonder why your comments are disabled on that daily star article… Ha Ha Ha.

  13. 24/07/2010 at 12:45 Rick says:

    I will repeat what I wrote in the other article

    Hahahahahahaha.

    That is all.

  14. 24/07/2010 at 12:52 Deston says:

    This is actually one of my favourite, albeit brief, gaming related stories this year.

    Another tragic situation shamelessly milked by our abysmal tabloid press has actually backfired against one of the worst offenders because they utterly failed to undertake any sort of basic journalistic effort whatsoever.

    That it has ended in the Daily Star publicly grovelling and having to donate a “substantial” (whatever that means) amount of cash to charity is just downright bloody superb.

    +1 wanted star to Rockstar for their handling of this.

  15. 24/07/2010 at 13:06 pipman300 says:

    daily star (all of them) beat a man to death on the steps of a church.

  16. 24/07/2010 at 13:08 Fwiffo says:

    Brings a whole new meaning to “hack journalist”, har har har.

  17. 24/07/2010 at 13:13 TheApologist says:

    The Daily Star are a total embarrassment to the human race.

    It’s not a surprise to see the journalist, faced with his own incompetence and moral bankruptcy and having just humiliated his employer, immediately turns to blame others people by retreating to a stereotype that is tired, witless and false. Pathetic.

  18. 24/07/2010 at 13:18 ThePeanutBaron says:

    Worst newspaper I dont know why anyone reads it all they have is fake news stories alongside garbage celebrity news

  19. 24/07/2010 at 13:25 Tye The Czar says:

    I wish more liars and con-artists(whoever you can think of) got their comeuppance like this.

  20. 24/07/2010 at 13:30 Mr_Day says:

    With his facebook comments, Lawton seems to show a distinct bias against at least the people who play games, if not the industry itself. I would wonder if that bias was the reason he didn’t spot the boxart for the obvious photoshop job it is.

    Harrassing grieving family members, showing bias, not fact checking, and causing his paper to humiliate itself at the altar of public opinion. In an ideal world, this would be the end of his career. I shall leave the jokes about not having one since he works for the Star up to you lot.

  21. 24/07/2010 at 13:33 Spinoza says:

    (Barry White voice) Uhh Yeah…

  22. 24/07/2010 at 13:34 Talorc says:

    Completely owned by Rockstar, well done lads. Given the very short length of time between publication and humiliating backdown, their lawyers must have really told them to get on their knees and beg, so as to end the pain fast.

    • 24/07/2010 at 15:30 Lachlan says:

      Interestingly, libel lawyers usually “aim high” when they write letters before action, to put as much pressure as possible on the defendant to make concessions. This looks like the Star just rolled over and begged…although frankly, I can’t see what kind of defence they could have raised.

      Oh, if only we could see a copy of that correspondence!

    • 24/07/2010 at 17:49 Zogtee says:

      Seriously, someone here must know someone who has a sister who has a granddaughter who has a dog who has a flea that works at the Daily *, and that flea MUST leak these documents somewhere on the internets.

      Put it in a torrent, ffs.

  23. 24/07/2010 at 13:39 Novotny says:

    I bet that stung Desmond’s arse quite a bit. Delighted.

    I’d have given my right arm to to hear the conversation that Rockstar’s lawyers had with the Star’s.

  24. 24/07/2010 at 14:04 Taillefer says:

    I expect a parody in the next GTA game.

  26. 24/07/2010 at 14:12 Shazbut says:

    This is absolute win

  27. 24/07/2010 at 14:12 Po0py says:

    This made my day.

  28. 24/07/2010 at 14:15 Bascule42 says:

    Jerry Lawson: C*nt of ’10

  29. 24/07/2010 at 14:19 Soban says:

    You know? The most funny thing, is that they placed some hot women right in the middle of the article, so you would be to distracted by them to pay any attention to the apology…. What was the apology about again?!?

  30. 24/07/2010 at 14:21 V. Profane says:

    A grown man who sits around all day updating his Facebook page? Poke! I win!

  31. 24/07/2010 at 14:44 humptygrumpty says:

    money down that said journalist makes his way into the next GTA game :]

  32. 24/07/2010 at 14:48 Mr. Versipellis says:

    What an utter prick. That is all i can say.

  33. 24/07/2010 at 15:10 Jimbo says:

    “Here’s some more tits to make up for it.”

  34. 24/07/2010 at 15:12 Radiant says:

    I would have played that game.

  35. 24/07/2010 at 15:16 sonofsanta says:

    That was absolutely superb. All newspaper apologies should follow the same form.

    Rockstar: you are forgiven all your sins now for having made this happen. Thank you.

  36. 24/07/2010 at 15:35 jalf says:

    I dunno, I’m not impressed. I’m missing one pretty important part of the apology:

    “How the hell could such a thing have happened for us, and how are we going to prevent it from happening again?”

    Sure, paying Rockstar a truckload of money is probably their only way out, but it would suit them to do a moment’s soul-searching and also at least touch briefly on “what went wrong, and what are we going to do about it”.

    The apology rings a bit hollow otherwise. “We screwed up, but we don’t really care enough to do anything to avoid screwing up again tomorrow”

    • 24/07/2010 at 15:52 drewski says:

      As long as they make more money in sales to “Outraged from Wallsend” than it costs them in paying off people they lie about, it’s not economic to tell the truth.

    • 24/07/2010 at 15:57 jalf says:

      I know, and that’s why I said I’m not impressed.

      What they’re saying isn’t really “we’re sorry we screwed up”, but rather “we’re sorry we *got caught* screwing up”.

      They don’t even say that posting made-up stories is a bad thing, or something that should be avoided. Just that they promise not to talk about *this* made-up story any more.

    • 24/07/2010 at 16:16 Uhm says:

      Though I support freedom of the press. Sometimes a license seems like a good idea.

  37. 24/07/2010 at 16:02 jeremypeel says:

    This is all quite wonderful!

  38. 24/07/2010 at 16:07 MrTambourineMan says:

    Ha! .44 Magnum would make my day, this news made my week!

  39. 24/07/2010 at 16:08 Paul Moloney says:

    I’m disappointed that Mr Lawton has not approved my Facebook friend request in order that I can post what a bellend he is.

    P.

  40. 24/07/2010 at 16:16 Bleeters says:

    Bwhaha. Grovel, puny worms. Grovel in the mud.

  41. 24/07/2010 at 16:39 Urthman says:

    I feel so much better about buying GTA4 now.

  42. 24/07/2010 at 17:30 Fartlord says:

    This isn’t raoul moatly funny

  43. 24/07/2010 at 18:00 clive dunn says:

    ‘The story was patently ridiculous, and demonstrated that even a newspaper as poorly regarded (by us, at least, legal fans) as the star’

    I don’t think a court in the land would convict you for saying that the Star is poorly regarded. I think even if you said that they are fucking scum spewing more scum onto there scummy customers, no judge would flinch. Infact i can’t actually think of an insult that would be going overboard regarding these twats.

    Oh, and it’s common knowledge that ‘dirty’ Des factors in an amount of money each month to his media ‘empire’ in regards to settlement payments, apologies and the like. I imagine he just wiggles his figures around to get all these ‘charity’ payments to actually benefit his tax burden.
    Fortunatly Private Eye are all over this dick and his ‘empire’. They can’t stop him, but they can expose him.

    And as of yesterday he now owns Channel 5, so expect more tits (of all varieties) coming to a screen near you.

  44. 24/07/2010 at 19:43 arrr_matey says:

    The awesome thing with libel cases is that each individual person can be held responsible for the libel, not just the corporate entity of the newspaper (at least in Canada where I live). So, everybody who had a hand in printing that story could have been individually sued and held accountable–from “reporter” to editor to publisher–as well as the newspaper. That’s probably why it got such a quick settlement.

    That and the fact the the Star had no leg to stand on so they would have lasted about 4 seconds in court.

    • 24/07/2010 at 23:53 FunkyBadger says:

      That’s actually a really bad law. Its only really going to impact on investigative journalism – if that were the case in the UK – and it isn’t, or at least its not the practice – then Private Eye, for example, couldn’t function.

    • 25/07/2010 at 13:04 Stephen says:

      Although there’s something weird about bringing up Canadian law when talking about an English newspaper (you’d rarely see it when talking about anything else – “this is how [it] works in my country – other countries are the same as mine, right?”) this happens a lot when there’s a legal element. It’s a pet peeve of mine – Canada drives on the other side of the road so there’s a law that’s different in England already.

      You get to sue whoever you like in England. If you want to sue the reporter who wrote the story you don’t like you just sue them, if you want to sue the newspaper you just sue them. Some people hedge their bets and go for both. The usual practice is to sue whoever seems likely to be able to afford to pay you something if you win. That side of it turns out not to have too much of an effect on investigative journalism because it’s better for you to sue the paper that published it and get a retraction that way (there are other things in libel law in England that are bad for investigative journalism).

      Generally suing an investigative journalist doesn’t get you any money (they can’t afford to pay you a settlement) and the journalist can’t always take the story down (because the paper often owns the rights to it) and just means an investigative journalist now has a grudge against you, your company and so on because you sued them.

  45. 24/07/2010 at 20:20 Shazbut says:

    Serious question: Does anyone actually know of someone who buys the Daily Star and reads and believes the stories? I mean, we all assume they exist. God knows there’s all kinds of people out there. But I’ve never knowingly met such a person. Maybe someone could show me a photo of a proven Daily Star “believer” so I could stare into their eyes and try and infiltrate their psyche. I’d like to understand the things that prevent them from having the self-awareness of a normal human being.

    • 24/07/2010 at 20:40 arrr_matey says:

      My friend’s grandmother thought that everything in a newspaper had to be true or else they wouldn’t print it. I think people from that generation still have some weird belief in the authority of the printed word.

  46. 24/07/2010 at 21:53 Dan Sunderland says:

    Lol, I was just thinking that :-)

  47. 24/07/2010 at 22:51 KBKarma says:

    What I really love about that story?

    The button at the bottom saying “More ‘News’ Here…”. They appear to be admitting that they just regurgitate shite.

  48. 25/07/2010 at 00:20 sinister agent says:

    As printed apologies go, this really was a shotgun to the head. And coming from a shitrag like the daily star, it’s pretty amazing.

  49. 25/07/2010 at 01:12 Manley Pointer says:

    So Rockstar gave the money to charity? That’s noble and all, but…didn’t they just lay off a bunch of the people who made Red Dead Redemption? I guess they prefer to give money away than use it to retain employees.

  50. 25/07/2010 at 01:51 Breaker Morant's Ghost says:

    Journalists are sleazebags, who knew?

  51. 25/07/2010 at 03:44 Sigma Draconis says:

    Good on Rockstar. That no one at the Daily Star bothered to check the accuracy of the already suspect story itself or the extremely obvious Photoshop job linked to it is hilarious (yet not surprising). Despite the spread of misinformation about video games, I love seeing the “Gotcha!” mentality of outlets like this trying to use any opportunity they can to link video games to the ills of modern society, but fail to do something as simple as fact-checking and end up making jackasses of themselves.

    …Especially editor Jerry Lawton, because not only does that Facebook entry show that he’s just out of touch, his name is now permanently attached to that hack job of an article and this incident in general. No need to post personal attacks on his Facebook page and make him look stupid — he’s done a bang up job of that himself.

  52. 25/07/2010 at 05:13 thebigJ_A says:

    What I want to know is, did they call up that poor old lady and explain to her that, when they called up previous, it was all a lie? Because odds are she’s not reading the interwebs to find out, and it’d be an awful shame for her to go on believing the videogame industry is making money off her tragedy.

    She needs to know it’s the print industry doing that.

  53. 25/07/2010 at 07:50 TheHumanBlur says:

    Two titans of ethics. All we need now is Laurence Olivier with ‘Im a massive wanker’ taped to his forrid

  54. 25/07/2010 at 08:51 Guildenstern says:

    It’s is pretty mild compared to other stuff those “journalists” pull off. At about same time this happened every major news outlet in the US have uncritically published racist smear against government employee that cost her her job, without doing any fact checking. I’ve wasted my outrage reserves on that story. Hmm, there’s no connection to gaming in that one… Oh wait, the guy who made Neverhood and Earthworm Jim is now working on the author of the smear. Ain’t it fun to have your childhood memories ruined.

  55. 25/07/2010 at 12:50 PHeMoX says:

    Just for the sake of getting rid of Daily Star, sue the heck out of them for this R*.

  56. 25/07/2010 at 12:55 Jam says:

    That’s one, surely?

  57. 25/07/2010 at 20:19 Heligohackster says:

    @funkybadger the law has always been that way – usually most of, if not all, the people that the claimant knows about go on the writ, but the publisher/newspaper group invariably picks up the tab.

  58. 27/07/2010 at 16:00 5p. says:

    @thebigJ_A:

    My thoughts exactly. I wouldn’t even say that Rockstar has suffered at all in this case – the article is so patently ludicrous that nobody even remotely familiar with games would have accepted it as fact, so they haven’t lost any sales. The one who’s suffered most as a result of that article is the poor old lady; she deserves to be told.

Comment on this story

XHTML: Allowed code: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

Respond to our gibber

Read our finest words

A Grim Couple Of Hours With Akaneiro: Demon Hunter

Search for clues

Play indie, mods, demos

Browse the archive