According to Reuters, the distribution of the game “Grand Theft Auto 4”, hereby denoted as GTA4, has been pulled in Thailand by a game-distributor, due to a teenager robbing and then killing a 54-year-old taxi driver. Newspapers reported the teenager said, he did not want to kill him at first, but killed him when he met with resistance. Police Chief Veeravit Pipattanasak told Reuters how the youth just wanted to find out, if robbing a taxi in real life was as easy as robbing one in the game.
The assailant’s parents said their son was polite and diligent, and the police said he did not seem to have mental problems during questioning.
Reuters also reports about a senior official at the Culture Ministry of Thailand, stating, that this incident was “[a] wake-up call for authorities to tackle the issue of violent video games“.
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First of all: It doesn’t matter if the guy ‘seemed’ to have no mental problems. If he murdered because he wanted to find out, if robbing a cab is as easy as not getting your dick caught while zipping your fly, he is a goddamn nutcase and belongs inside a rubber cell. Furthermore, parents seem to have a misconception about making kids “polite and diligent”, and thinking that this somehow completes their parenting responsibilities. As long as kid doesn’t curse and brings out the trash, everything else is dandy. Maybe if they would have told their young kid, that robbing a cab and stabbing people aren’t good moves, instead of drinking and wasting their time watching soaps, maybe then they wouldn’t have a murderer as their son. If they would have spent some time with the kid, then the boy would have known that robbing people gets you nowhere fast.
The official talking about how this is a wakeup call also seems to have the wrong idea about what the cause of this dilemma is. No, I’m not talking about the difficulty of GTA4 carjacking being too low, I’m talking about dipshit parents and idiotic schools not teaching their kids/pupils what they need to know in life. If anything, this is a wakeup call for everyone able to discern fantasy from reality. I also bet the newspapers bitching about GTA4 will push the teenagers’ diligence and “politeness” in front of everyone’s faces, as if to say, look, a nice polite boy was ULTIMATELY CORRUPTED. At least he didn’t fly a helicopter into a building, waiting to be respawned. I hope the youth didn’t find the “get out of jail free card” beforehand, so Bubba can finally teach him something about how painful reality really is.
Jack Thompson should really take on this case: GTA4 murder simulation too easy, lack of difficulty may cause delusion and death! Rockstar must immediately patch the game, to make the player first brutally struggle and kill the taxi driver to be able to take his car, if Rockstar wants to keep selling this game.
On another note, the source is quite misleading. Thailand didn’t halt the distribution of the game, a distributor did. I’m not sure if this distributor is a monopolist in their country, but I doubt it somewhat. The news also makes no mention of any sort of ban.
