Remember way, way back in 2005, when Grand Theft Auto III: San Andreas was released? The response from politicians and, resultantly, the media was to brand videogames as gratuitously violent, corrupters of youth, responsible for all the moral decay of society. Hillary Clinton, already reaching across the aisle to right-of-centre voters, publicly denounced the game, demanded the Federal Trade Commission crack down on the offending mods, and announced her plans to introduce stricter legislation aimed at preventing children from accessing the game. Those days were a heady mix of righteous indignation and moral panic.

Fast-forward to 2008, and the release of the next sequel in the GTA line. Parents’ groups are strangely silent, at least as far as media coverage is concerned. Clinton has made no mention of her pet issue (granted, she has more pressing issues to worry about at the moment), but no one on the right has stepped up to take her place, either. Have we simply grown immune to videogame violence in the last 3 years? To paraphrase Cole Porter, “in olden days a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking, but now, God knows, anything goes”?

I have a different theory. I formed this theory because GTA: IV has been so explosively popular, its sales (and only its sales) have been reported in virtually every major media outlet. In its first week on shelves, the game has grossed half a billion – with a “B” – in sales. This makes it the largest opening week for anything, ever. As it turns out, people actually like this game, and not just any people – people who vote. And who watch the news. It’s not just stoners in college anymore; a significant percentage of pretty much any news outlet’s audience is going to be made up of GTA fans now. And while standards of acceptable levels of violence change, one thing remains the same: money talks – and half a billion dollars yells.

In mainstream news, a given subject can support only one meme at a time. And in a meme-off between media violence and barrelfulls of money, money will win every time.