Juvenile crime caused by game violence has become a serious social problem nowadays. The website of TIMESONLINE has released a news about a 19-year-old high-school student killed a taxi driver while recreating a scene from the game in Thailand.
One of the largest video game distributors in Asia has halted sales of the Grand Theft Auto IV in Thailand after a teenager confessed to robbing and murdering a taxi driver while trying to recreate a scene from the game.
New Era Interactive said it had sent a note to all of its Thai stores telling them to pull the game off the shelves after a 19-year old high-school student confessed to killing a taxi driver with a knife he bought at a local branch of Tesco.
Police in Bangkok said that the youth "had wanted to find out if it was as easy in real life to rob a taxi as it was in the game."
"We are urging all video game arcades to pull the game from service," said a spokesman for New Era Interactive, which has offices in Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Indonesia, and the Philippines.
Polwat Chino, 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, according to local newspaper reports.
He had paid to play the game at a local shop in Bangkok, and said he had needed more cash to continue playing it and that the taxi driver looked like an easy target.
Neighbours in the Bang Phlad district in central Bangkok called police after Mr Chino was heard pressing the car's horn while reversing down a dead end street. He had been trying to drive away, apparently in an attempt to recreate a scene from the game in which a criminal steals a car to evade police, but was unable to control a real car, police said.
The victim, a 54-year-old man from the poor northern province of Maha Sarakham, had been stabbed ten times.
A police spokesman said Mr Chino, 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.
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