Google Play pulled a game called "Angry Trayvon" after it incited widespread anger from people who claimed that the mobile app unscrupulously took advantage of the teen's death.
In the game, an enraged man in a hooded jacket with a bandana wrapped around his face must finish a "world tour of revenge on the bad guys who terrorize cities every day."
After a petition on the website Change.org began circulating that called for the removal of "Angry Trayvon," the video game and all its social media affiliate pages were removed from the Internet on Tuesday, CBS reported.
The petition's writers said that the mobile game blatantly referenced Trayvon Martin, the teenage boy shot to death by George Zimmerman, who is currently on trial for the crime. The creators drafted a letter to Google, explaining their discomfort with the application that they claimed glorified the violence that afflicted Trayvon Martin and led to his ultimate death.
"The death of this young man is NOT A GAME," they wrote. "This developer is using the Google Marketplace to exploit the death of an unarmed teen for profit, while simultaneously promoting violence. Given the racial and social climate surrounding this issue and the unfair depiction of a deceased minor who perished as a result of gun violence, we are asking that this application be moved from the Google Play marketplace immediately."
On Monday, the makers of the app apologized in a public release, stating they would remove the game from the Internet. They apologized for "the inconvenience," but maintained that Angry Trayvon was "by no means a racist game."
The killing of Trayvon Martin has sparked a nation-wide debate on racial issues-Martin was reportedly unarmed when Zimmerman shot the teenage boy in the chest at close range on Feb. 26.
After news of the murder broke, the nation was divided by protest and questions of whether or not Zimmerman-who claims he acted in self-defense-shot Trayvon Martin for racist reasons. Zimmerman turned himself in to the authorities and was charged with second-degree murder, April 11.
