Dyre Straits

"A videogame distributor in Thailand decided to stop selling Grand Theft Auto IV following news that a teenager confessed to copying a scene from the game as he robbed and killed a taxi driver. To my knowledge, there is no specific scene in the game that depicts the murder of a taxi driver but the confession of the murder is proof enough of the dangers of the videogame that the distributor decided not to sell it anymore.

Sakchai Chotikachinda, who is the sales and marketing director of New Era Interactive Media, told Reuters that "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".

Veeravit Pipattanasak, who is the police investigator assigned to the case, declared that "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". And the Culture Ministry reacted to the news by pointing to videogames as one of the main causes of violence amongst youngsters in the country."

Want to read the rest....

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Teena...er-91401.shtml

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Syncroneyes

Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later. All those idiots out there who think you can base an entire youth culture around hedonistic lifestyles rooted in money, drugs, sex and violence - and then not expect anything bad to come out of it are living on planet retard.

- Idiots like those posting on our own "New York passes new violent gaming law" thread, who say they will still give violent games to their kids regardless of any regulations. - f***ing dumb asses.

How can we be surprised if things like this happen when people can't even be bothered to take steps to at least TRY to reduce the social repercussions:

"Yeah, lets just give violent games away to our kids and just hope they dont do anything bad later after being immersed in these uber-violent worlds for long periods of time" - that makes sense.

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"Anytime, anywhere".

Unixlord

Back in the old days kids played sonic. So if they tried to imitate they'd spin and bang their head learning a valuable lesson in the process.

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IQ, when aggregated, follows Ohm's law.

Syncroneyes

That's just it - young kids aren't playing Sonic and Mario anymore. They're playing Manhunt and GTA - which are super-violent. Thats why we need these regulations in place.

There is a massive social misconception that "video-games" in general are something designed for kids. - Thats because originally, years and years ago they were.

Not anymore. Today a larger proportion of games and consoles than ever before are designed mainly with adults in mind.

- Hell, most kids can't even afford a Playstation 3, Xbox360 or a gaming PC or even the games to play on them, but they will save every last penny they have (probably with some help from mom + dad) and go buy one.

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"Anytime, anywhere".