Scandinavia’s largest LGBT Pride festival is kicking off this week with, of all things, a free Grand Theft Auto V mod. Los Santos Pride, a free mod that can be downloaded here, is the brainchild of six modders who created the parade to raise awareness for Stockholm Pride. The in-game Pride parade for those hardcore-gamer Scandinavians may be pretty complex, but you can’t deny the video that has hundreds of thousands of views. It’s incredibly well made, after all.
But the realities of the Grand Theft Auto series quickly came into play for the Los Santos Pride Parade. At first, William Lothman, one of the commissioners of the mod, was fine with the parade being disrupted by the violence GTA is known for. He told Polygon:
“This project has never been about moralizing about violence in video games. Doing something violent inside it doesn’t mean that you stand behind violence or horrific acts.”
But after the events in Orlando, in which Pulse nightclub saw dozens killed in a horrific shooting, Lothman changed his tune. “We decided to make it indestructible — just to show that love always triumphs,” he said.
So now we have a truly powerful image that’s undeniably 2016 — Grand Theft Auto V, a violent, ridiculous and brutal satire on life in the United States, has an indestructible Pride parade that will never be disturbed because love always triumphs.
(Via Polygon)