Police have arrested a man for “forcing” his stepson to play GTA4, after the stress of playing the horrible game caused him to develop a neurological disorder.
According to police reports, the 28-year-old Nara prefecture nurse was living at home with the 9-year-old son of his 31-year-old wife, who was the child of her previous marriage.
He made the boy play GTA4 on the PS3 “2-3 times a week for 2-3 hours a time,” and the boy apparently complained of stomach aches, headaches and nausea to his mother, after which she separated from the man.
The next month the boy was diagnosed with a neurological disorder obtained as a result of the stress of the game, and the woman made a formal complaint against her husband, whom police arrested and charged with criminal coercion.
He denies the charges, saying “I did not force the boy to play.”
The wicked game featured “shootings and murders, blood and cruelty” and was only one of a number of 18+ titles the man “made” the boy play, according to media reports.
The case has been greeted with some scepticism online:
“Not GTA again…”
“What do you expect, this stuff always happens with children from previous marriages.”
“He was probably just playing it himself. Sounds like something to do with the circumstances of their marriage.”
“Honestly, if he did force the kid, whilst it may not have been a good influence I rather doubt he would be vomiting because of it.”
“He may have just been sick from the 3D.”
“He secretly played the game, got a bit motion sick, the mother pinned it on the game and used it to get out of the marriage? Sounds as plausible as forcing a kid to play GTA for some weird reason…”
“The game was probably just a pretext, it sounds like the pair did not have a happy marriage and that is more likely to cause him stress than a game.”
“Honestly, the mass media are deliberately twisting this to be the fault of the game, aren’t they?”
“What kind of sicko likes these games! No wonder they’d destroy the health of a 9-year-old forced to play them.”
If this is the case, then everyone at Squeenix should be sentenced to death for flogging Final Fantasy after 7.
In America:
Fathers ruin their son’s lives by not spending any time with them.
In Japan:
(Step)Fathers “ruin their son’s lives” by spending time with them.
I find the whole ‘developed a mental illness!’ thing and ‘forcing him to play the game’ hard to impossible to believe here.
The police are going to end up with eggs on their face if this man has even a WHIT of self-respect and ‘challenge the authority’ in him.
Forcing a child to play GTA is immoral and unethical.
In an alternate universe–
“10 year old child arrested for forcing his 40 year old stepfather to play Pokemon, which caused him terrible head-aches and god-knows-how caused heart diseases, which resulted in his death after a few weeks in the hospital bed.”
Cause, why the f♥♥k not?
Actually, I think that more grownups than kids play Pokemon. The kids all play GTA, COD etc., because they THINK that’s what grownups do. Only shows how much they still have to learn … 😉
And THAT’S the main reason why this news story makes no sense to me…