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The Smiths Partner with PETA for “Meat Is Murder” Video Game

It’s interesting (and by interesting, we mean kind of a fucked up letdown) that a prolific, longtime animal activist such as Morrissey continues to partner with perhaps the shittiest animal-rights organisation in existence in PETA but hey, that’s the world we live in and now we have a video game to remind us of it.

In a new venture, The Smiths have teamed up with PETA to develop a vintage arcade-inspired video game interpretation of the band’s 1985 song Meat Is Murder. The game takes a line from the song for it’s title, This Beautiful Creature Must Die and is available for download from the PETA website for free. The action within the game is simple enough: save animals from slaughter. Players save chickens, cows, pigs and turkeys from their impending death by tapping them before they hit the bottom of the screen, while also avoiding being hit by falling bombs because reasons.

According to the Vice President of Marketing over at PETA, Joel Bartlett, the hopes for the game are that it will motivate people to turn vegan. “After mastering the game, players can save animals and the Earth in real life by going vegan.” Morrissey meanwhile views things a little differently, stating that the game is perhaps “the biggest social crusade of all… as we safeguard the weak and helpless from violent human aggression,” adding “you don’t get that from Pokémon Go.”

This isn’t PETA’s first foray into video games, having previously released a number of in-browser games on their website much like This Beautiful Creature Must Die, as well as weighing in on the treatment of animals in existing video games, (the killing of whales in Assassin’s Creed 4, as well as setting up an animal safety area in Minecraft.

Still, vows of veganism seem an unlikely outcome from a video game with an 8-bit version of a Smiths song in it, so for good measure there is, naturally, also a new PETA campaign video out which features The Smiths as the soundtrack.

Image: Consequence of Sound