"Angry Trayvon" Should Never Have Made It to Google's App Store

Impact

When the Angry Trayvon game was made available at the Google Play store, there was substantial public outcry that the game was racist and derogatory towards the late Trayvon Martin. Downloadable on your iPhone or Android, the game was released last Christmas and updated in June, but has since been removed due to a petition on Change.org. It's difficult not to relate the killing of 17-year-old Treyvon Martin to this violent game which bears his name. The disrespectful content should have never made it to any app store in the first place.

Developed by Trade Digital, the game pits a menacing character against a myriad variety of armed, white attackers. The short clips in the video below shows a hooded figure, dressed in a grey sweatshirt, and blue jeans, lunging at his aggressors with knives in hand.

Even the description of the game on Google Play is upsetting:

"Trayvon is angry and nobody can stop him from completing his world tour of revenge on the bad guys who terrorize cities everyday. Use a variety of weapons to demolish Trayvon's attackers in various cities around the world. As you complete a level, you will notice more bad guys coming at Trayvon at a faster pace and a deadlier attack." (Read more here.)

608 reviews displayed the public's displeasure with the application. One user writes, "Why would you crate some trash like this. Complete garbage, go play in traffic." Another states, "This is very offensive to the Martin family and if you had any respect you would remove this game." What shocks me is the 70 people who gave the application 5 stars —clearly they didn't understand the distasteful nature of the game.

The developers have responded by releasing the following statement, "Sorry for the inconvenience as this was just an action game for entertainment. This was by no means a racist game."

If it wasn't meant to be a racist game, could you really not find another title besides Angry Trayvon? I find it hard to believe.