An 8-year-old child shot and killed his grandmother last week in Slaughter, LA. The local police department revealed that the child had been playing Grand Theft Auto IV immediately before the incident occurred, and have implied that the game specifically led to the accident; Take Two Interactive has spoken out against this claim.

CNN reported that the child intentionally shot his 87-year-old grandmother after playing Grand Theft Auto IV on the PS3. As the child is under the age of 10, Louisiana laws exempt him from facing criminal charges. Police are pointing fingers towards Grand Theft Auto IV, believing it to be the sole cause for the shooting, however GTA‘s developer Take Two responded to CNN, stating that “Ascribing a connection to entertainment — a theory that has been disproven repeatedly by multiple independent studies — both minimizes this moment and sidesteps the real issues at hand”. With the incidents of Sandy Hook, and several callbacks to the Columbine shooting, society has been very quick to blame violence in video games as the core problem for real-world actions in today’s youth. While Take Two doesn’t highlight any specifics with their statement, the company might possibly be addressing the issue of “parental awareness”: The child involved in the Slaughter shooting not only had access to a firearm, but also had access to a game whose intended audience is 18+; apart from containing content specifically aimed at a mature audience, a child may not have the mental and emotional capacity to differentiate the rules of reality within a video game, and the rules of the “real world”. A few months ago, the ESRB (Entertainment Software Ratings Board) created new Rating icons to replace the current ones, in hopes that the new design will be easier to view by parents and concerned buyers of video games.

Source: CNN