The Church of England threatens legal action against Sony.

Apparently, in Resistance: Fall of Man, one of the levels involves a gun battle in the Cathedral of Manchester, and the Church of England, upon noticing this, has vocally objected.

“Fair enough, “you might think, “it’s their Church, and a likeness of it has been used without permission.” What I’m not happy about is the Thompson-esque nature of their argument:

It is well known that Manchester has a gun crime problem.

For a global manufacturer to re-create one of our great cathedrals with photo-realistic quality and then encourage people to have guns battles in the building is beyond belief and highly irresponsible.

Quite aside from the dubious nature of their claim that playing games in which you have gun battles encourages you to do the same thing in real life, this raises a more troubling question. If Manchester has a gun-crime problem that can be exacerbated by Resistance, do they also have the associated alien invasion problem? And why haven’t I heard about it?