Thai Taxi Murder Causes Problems for Violent Video Games

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Games with violent or sexually suggestive content continue to be big news in the US, but the struggle over how to deal with them is one that the entire world faces. The situation became dire in Thailand recently, as a Thai distributor stopped sales of the controversial game Grand Theft Auto IV. The reason? A teenager killed a taxi driver, then blamed the game for his actions.

"He said he wanted to find out if it was as easy in real life to rob a taxi as it was in the game," chief police investigator Veeravit Pipattanasak said, as reported by Reuters. But concerns about such titles aren't limited to Thailand.


Games like Fallout 3 are being refused classification in Australia, and the same happened to Manhunt 2 last year. Thailand is requesting all stores stop sales of GTA IV. I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm sick of video games (or any other form of media) being blamed for the sick things people do. People need to have some accountability to their actions.
  • added August 05, 2008
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3 responses // Thai Taxi Murder Causes Problems for Violent Video Games

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    I personally am sick of parents who allow their kids to play grotesquely violent games without even talking to them about the separation of fantasy and reality. Sure, these games have some of the blame; so do the parents as well as the kids who commit the acts they see in these games.
    People do need to have accountability for their actions, and that includes the people who think up these sorts of games as well as the people who take the games too literally. In the end, we are our brother's keeper, and there's a social responsibility we all have to respect.

    alicynx
    1 response to this
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    The kid was a fuckin sicko, plain and simple. He was going to kill someone no matter what. He just needed something to blame. If it wasn't a game it would have been a movie or a tv show or a book or a piece of art he saw once in his life. If every person in the world who has played a violent video game became violent the world would be on fire. But it's not, because 99.9% of gamers understand that it's just a fuckin game. The reason why it continues to be a hot button issue in the states is because a bunch of pro-censorship radicals are upset that they haven't figured out a way to overturn freedom of speech in this country. And as long as freedom of speech exsists, violence and sex in video games will exsist. So it's your choice.......Freedom or Fascism?

    PWNtheVOTE

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