If you have ever played the game Pokémon, then you are aware of the premise of the game. You, a ten-year-old child, are sent on a quest to capture and collect animals, called Pokémon, and use them to “battle” against other “Pokémon trainers.” While the premise could be described as domineering, is reversing the roles and having the Pokémon fight people any better? PETA seems to think so.

In 2012, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), a group known for advocating for the rights of animals through outrageous and extreme protests and demonstrations, created a browser-based computer game that depicts a Pokémon uprising, where the player plays as a handful of those Pokémon and fights the people who had imprisoned them. The game itself is graphic, with images of bloodied and bruised Pokémon, and includes human characters who hold beer bottles, whips, and bloody needles.

Pokémon is not the first video game that PETA has protested. In 2009, PETA led a protest against the clubbing of virtual baby seals in the popular online game World of Warcraft. Then in 2011, PETA launched a campaign against the popular video game character Mario, from the Mario Brothers series. PETA accused the Italian plumber of “wearing the skin of a raccoon dog to give him special powers.” In the game, Mario actually gains the power to fly from picking up a leaf that turns him into a tanooki, a type of raccoon dog found in Japan.

While protesting the treatment of virtual animals seems like a valiant cause to some, PETA is not helping by targeting these video games, as PETA is only angering the people who enjoy the games and protesting something that really doesn’t matter. Sure, it’s bad to kill baby seals or have animals fight each other, but protesting the conditions of virtual animals does nothing but make PETA look bad.

Though imprisoning animals and animal cruelty are bad, PETA isn’t targeting the right causes. In targeting these video games, PETA is only hurting its cause by giving negative press to itself and the video games it’s protesting. Instead of seeing an article about the conditions in puppy mills or the killing of endangered animals, people will see an article about the conditions of virtual animals which, in truth, don’t really exist.