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Hot Thai coffee, anyone?

In response to the murder of a Bangkok taxi driver by a 19 year-old student, Thai authorities officially banned sales of Rockstar's controversial Grand Theft Auto franchise on Tuesday.

"GTA is banned mainly because of its obscene content -- under the criminal law article 287 that prohibits reproduction, distribution or possession of such material," police spokesman Ruangsak Jaritake told Agence France-Presse. "The police are empowered to immediately arrest shopkeepers if they find any GTA games on sale."

Any storekeepers caught stocking or selling a copy of any GTA game face a fine of up to 6000 baht ($135 U.S.) and up to three years in prison. Online retailers face even stricter penalties of up to 100,000 baht ($3000 U.S.) and five years behind bars.

According to police reports, 19 year-old Polwat Chino admitted that GTA inspired him to steal the cab and kill the driver. He was arrested after he was caught trying to drive a cab backwards down a Bangkok street with the wounded cab driver slumped in the back seat.

"He wanted to find out if it was as easy in real life to rob a taxi as it was in the game," Bangkok police Captain Veerarit Pipatanasak told Reuters.

Exactly which version of GTA Chino was playing is unknown, though in a statement, game distributor New Era Interactive Media seemingly exempted the most recent entry, Grand Theft Auto IV, as apparently it has yet to be imported.

"We have stopped selling Grand Theft Auto and inform all legal vendors to withdraw the game from their shelves," they said. "The company will not import GTA 4 to distribute in Thailand."

The ban comes as Thailand's Culture Ministry has been pushing for stronger regulation of violent video games.

"This time-bomb has already exploded and the situation could get worse," Ladda Thangsupachai, director of the Cultural Surveillance Centre, said in the Reuters report. "Today it is a cab driver, but tomorrow it could be a video game shop owner."

Thailand joins a growing list of countries struggling with the controversial nature of the GTA franchise. Earlier this year, Australia and New Zealand released an edited version of GTA IV to meet regional classification standards. New Zealand has since rescinded that stance and has released the unedited version game under the strict R18 rating.

As of May 31, Grand Theft Auto IV is the best-selling game of the year, pushing over 8.5 million units worldwide.

http://videogames.yahoo.com/feature/thai...es/1234729
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Well, what do you guys think? We've had similar cases in the US, with idiots going out of there way to emulate scenarios in a GTA game. Only here in America, the parents tried to sue Sony and Rockstar for it, too (wow, nothing illustrates the meaning of the words "delusions sense of overentitlement" quite like that). Do you think violent games encourage violent impulses, or do they curb them? Or is it different for anyone? I don't think video games could make a psycho of anyone--but a psycho sure can play a video game. I for one am a very well adjusted young woman who enjoys the GTA series for being able to shoot dozens of cops in a several hours spree if I've had a bad day at work and need the chance to vent.

It'll be interesting to hear Manaburn's opinion, I believe he currently lives in Thailand.

I get sick and tired of people blaming video games for the violence around them. Personally anyone who says "GTA made me do it, or I wanted to see if it could be done like on GTA." is either seriously retarded or playing a game. If there were thousands of cases of this happening, then maybe we could draw a correlation, but when 1 person here and 1 person there do something dumb and blame a video game, then you have to look at personal responsibility and not blame a dvd or blu-ray disc for what they hold on them.

I bet there have been plenty of murders inspired by news events but you never see them rallying against the Associated Press. Jeffrey Dahmer himself was inspired in some of his ritualistic torture by another killer he'd heard about in the newspaper.

Yeah, I've discussed this on another forum already but am too lazy to look up that thread and quote myself so here's the gist of it.  What has been reported in the news is total bs and they didn't get the facts straight.  First off the 18 year old kid comes from a broken home and had a father who liked to get drunk and beat on his mother.  I'm sure that has a lot to do with his actions.  Secondly, the kid was said to have been playing GTA4 in a LAN shop but everyone knows that GTA4 isn't out for the PC yet.  Also, they showed videos and pics of the game and it was GTA3.  They then went on to say that he decided to rob the taxi driver because he need more money to play GTA4 online in the LAN shop some more...  It costs about 50 cents an hour in the LAN shops here and he was able to go out and purchase two knives but didn't have enough money to pay 50 cents for more play time?  

Later on they were discussing it on the news and they kept referring to the game as GTO instead of GTA...  Then they said Thailand would ban the selling of this game as well as ten other online games that are already banned in the U.S.  The problem with that is the ten games they listed had only one game that was online and none of them have been banned in the U.S.  The Thai government speak loudly but never ever follow through and this will be just another example.  I can still go to any store in Bangkok and pick up this game right now.