Not so long ago, the city of Chicago saw a major increase in violence in April 2008. The midwest metropolitan area had seen thirteen fatal shootings while almost forty shootings were reported. During the same time, Grand Theft Auto IV was about to be released on store shelves. Obviously, Take-Two was promoting the game as much as they could and some even were marketed on buses and billboards around the country.

Of course Chicago had to do something about the situation of the rise of gun violence and decided to blame the soon-to-be released GTA IV. They went so far to have any ads visible to the public taken down — while comparing the ads to porn and how porn would never be allowed to have any kind advertisements in public places. That included the same bus ads and billboards. Before the incident, Take-Two and the city agreed to a $300,000 contract to have the ads seen across the city, but because of the censorship, the Grand Theft Auto publisher had no choice — they had to sue.

Today we have word the Chicago Transit Authority and Take-Two are nearing a settlement but as of now, there are no details. It’s good to see another victory for a video game company, even though we would have rather seen Chicago just keep the ads and understand that censorship is actually worse than GTA — it’s good to know every time in the end, video games always win.

Maybe one day advocacy groups will know it’s pretty much impossible to censer any kind of speech…and just leave us alone.