jagui on 04 August 2008
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New Era Interactive Media, Grand Theft Auto IV's Thailand distributor, has pulled the game following a murderer’s claims to have been inspired by the title.
The distributor issued a call to pull GTA IV from store shelves after a teenager confessed to robbing and murdering a taxi driver, claiming he was recreating a scene from the game.
‘We are sending out requests today to outlets and shops to pull the games off their shelves and we will replace them with other games... We are also urging videogame arcades to pull the games from service,’ Sakchai Chotikachinda, sales and marketing director of New Era Interactive Media, told Reuters. The 18-year-old offender, now in custody, was reportedly an obsessive player of GTA IV before he went out to rob and murder a 54-year-old taxi driver. ‘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,’ said chief police investigator Veeravit Pipattanasak.
The 18-year-old high school student, now in custody pending further investigations and a trial, faces death by lethal injection if found guilty of robbing and killing a 54-year-old taxi driver with a knife at the weekend. Police said the youth, an obsessive player of Grand Theft Auto, showed no sign of mental problems during questioning and had confessed to committing the crime because of the game. The youth, described by his parents as polite and diligent, was arrested late on Saturday after he was found trying to steer a cab backwards out of a Bangkok street with the severely wounded driver in the back seat, newspapers reported. The suspect told police he did not mean to kill the driver, whom he had chosen as a possible victim because of his age, but that he stabbed him to death when he fought back, newspapers reported.
Grand Theft Auto, now available in its fourth edition, has been criticised for depicting violence including beatings, carjackings, drive-by shootings, drunk driving and prostitution. The ministry has been pushing for tougher regulation of video games such as Grand Theft Auto, including the imposition of a rating system on sales and restriction on hours that youngsters can play the games in public arcades. A multi-million dollar lawsuit was filed in the U.S. state of Alabama against the makers and marketers of Grand Theft Auto in 2005, claiming that months of playing the game led a teenager to kill two police officers and a 911 dispatcher.
The distributor issued a call to pull GTA IV from store shelves after a teenager confessed to robbing and murdering a taxi driver, claiming he was recreating a scene from the game.
‘We are sending out requests today to outlets and shops to pull the games off their shelves and we will replace them with other games... We are also urging videogame arcades to pull the games from service,’ Sakchai Chotikachinda, sales and marketing director of New Era Interactive Media, told Reuters. The 18-year-old offender, now in custody, was reportedly an obsessive player of GTA IV before he went out to rob and murder a 54-year-old taxi driver. ‘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,’ said chief police investigator Veeravit Pipattanasak.
The 18-year-old high school student, now in custody pending further investigations and a trial, faces death by lethal injection if found guilty of robbing and killing a 54-year-old taxi driver with a knife at the weekend. Police said the youth, an obsessive player of Grand Theft Auto, showed no sign of mental problems during questioning and had confessed to committing the crime because of the game. The youth, described by his parents as polite and diligent, was arrested late on Saturday after he was found trying to steer a cab backwards out of a Bangkok street with the severely wounded driver in the back seat, newspapers reported. The suspect told police he did not mean to kill the driver, whom he had chosen as a possible victim because of his age, but that he stabbed him to death when he fought back, newspapers reported.
Grand Theft Auto, now available in its fourth edition, has been criticised for depicting violence including beatings, carjackings, drive-by shootings, drunk driving and prostitution. The ministry has been pushing for tougher regulation of video games such as Grand Theft Auto, including the imposition of a rating system on sales and restriction on hours that youngsters can play the games in public arcades. A multi-million dollar lawsuit was filed in the U.S. state of Alabama against the makers and marketers of Grand Theft Auto in 2005, claiming that months of playing the game led a teenager to kill two police officers and a 911 dispatcher.
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