Murder Halts Sales Of GTA In Thailand
A video game distributor in Thailand suspended sales of the controversial “Grand Theft Auto” Monday amid reports of an 18-year-old high school student who confessed to trying to replicate a scene from the game by robbing and murdering a 54-year-old taxi driver with a knife.
"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," said Sakchai Chotikachinda, sales and marketing director of New Era Interactive Media, during an interview with Reuters.
"We are also urging video game arcades to pull the games from service.”
The teenager is now in custody awaiting further investigations and a trial, and faces death by lethal injection if found guilty.
Police said the student was an obsessive player of "Grand Theft Auto", and displayed no outward sign of mental problems during questioning. The teen, described by his parents as polite and diligent, admitted to committing the crime because of the game.
"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," Veeravit Pipattanasak, the head police investigator, told Reuters.
According to news reports, the suspect was arrested late Saturday in Bangkok after he was found attempting steer a taxi backwards out of a street with the severely wounded driver in the back seat. The teen told police he did not intent to murder the driver, whom he had chosen as a victim because of his age, and that he stabbed him to death only because he fought back.
"Grand Theft Auto", published by Take-Two Interactive Software, is currently in its fourth edition. The game has been widely criticized for depicting violence such as carjackings, beatings, drunk driving, drive-by shootings and prostitution.
A senior official at Thailand’s Culture Ministry said the murder was a wake-up call for authorities to address the issue of violence in video games, and called on parents to closely monitor the games their children played.
"This time-bomb has already exploded and the situation could get worse," Ladda Thangsupachai, director of the ministry’s Cultural Surveillance Centre, told Reuters.
"Today it is a cab driver, but tomorrow it could be a video game shop owner."
The ministry has been pursuing stricter regulation of video games such as Grand Theft Auto, including the implementation of a rating system and imposing restrictions on hours that children can play the games in public arcades.
In 2005, a multi-million dollar lawsuit was filed in Alabama against the makers and marketers of Grand Theft Auto. The lawsuit claimed that a teenager was driven to killing two police officers and a 911 dispatcher after months of playing the game.
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