Thailand's GTA IV distributor pulls game following murder

by Alexander Sliwinski on Aug 4th 2008 11:15AM

Grand Theft Auto IV's Thailand distributor, New Era Interactive Media, is asking retailers to pull the title after an 18-year-old said he was inspired by the game to rob and murder a 54-year-old cab driver. According to police investigator Veeravit Pipattanasak (via Reuters), the young man wanted to find out if it was as easy to rob a taxi in real life as it was in the game. After the cab driver fought back, the young man stabbed him to death.

Thailand's Culture Ministry plans to use the incident as an opportunity to try and regulate violent video games. As for the 18-year-old, if found guilty, he faces the possibility of lethal injection as punishment for the murder.

[Via GI.biz]

Source

Tags: banned, bbc, grand-theft-auto, grand-theft-auto-iv, gta-iv, PS3, thailand, Xbox-360

Reader Comments (53)

I'm in Thailand. Most people discussing the case are either on the side of the kid being mentally ill or it's a stupid excuse he's using to get sympathy. One exception is the government who are being Jack Thompson.... As usual, no one looks into the family condition, the environment he grew up in, etc. etc.
Sigh...

This is just another example of the "it's not my fault, blame this" mentality that seems to permeate itself in a guilty party. You no longer have to take responsibility for your own actions, as long as there is an applicable reason that society can stand there and, on the whole, agree must be the cause.

Unfortunately, we live in a world where the vocal majority is usually the smallest percentage of people. And unlike us, where we all come on to our favourite sites both for gaming and news, citing examples of why this is wrong, and why we hate it, they take it to the news networks who, based on their incessant need to fight for ratings, wouldn't listen to us anyway.

If there is a hell, I hope they've got a special place set aside for this prick, and a seat for the cab driver in heaven to watch the aforementioned prick suffer.

Wait a tick...

You can buy legit games in thailand?! I've been here for eight months and I haven't seen a single non-pirated game in a store anywhere!

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