Manhunt Pulled from Stores After Murder

Dixons has pulled Rockstar’s Manhunt game from shelves after parents claimed that it inspired the murder of their 14 year old boy.

Rockstar are no strangers to controversy, and have had previous titles, mainly from the Grand Theft Auto series, banned or pulled from shops before.

Warren LeBlanc, 17 years old, pleaded guilty to the murder of 14 year old Stefan Pakeerah after luring him into a park in the Midlands and murdering him with a claw hammer and a knife.

An unpaid drug debt was given as the reason for the murder.

Manhunt is clearly marked as an 18 certificate game, and should not be sold or played by minors like LeBlanc. Those ratings are on the box for a reason, you know.

Giselle Pakeerah, Stefan’s mother said “I think that I heard some of Warren’s friends say that he was obsessed by this game. If he was obsessed by it, it could well be that boundaries for him became quite hazy. I can’t believe that this sort of material is allowed in a society where anarchy is not that far removed. It should not be available and it should not be available to young people.”

“I think that I heard”? Curiously, no-one has blamed the drugs involved for the murder as yet.

The Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers’ Association, who provide age ratings on video games, issues a statement: “We reject any suggestion or association between the tragic events in the Midlands and the sale of the video game Manhunt.”

The continued: “The game in question is classified 18 by the British Board of Film Classification and therefore it should not be in the possession of a juvenile. We would also add that simply being in someone’s possession does not and should not lead to the conclusion that a game is responsible for these tragic events.”

In response to the claims, and to avoid possible copycat actions, Dixons will be removing the game from all 1,000 stores throughout their group.

ELSPA

Rockstar Games

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Fraser Lovatt

Fraser Lovatt has spent the last fifteen years working in publishing, TV and the Internet in various capacities, and believes that they will be seperate platforms for at least a while yet. His main interests at the moment are exploring where Linux is taking home entertainment and how technology is conferring technical skills on more and more people. Fraser Lovatt was born in the same year that 2001: A Space Odyssey was delighting and confusing people in the cinemas, and developed a lifelong love of technology as soon as he realised that things could be taken apart, sometimes put back together again, but mostly left in bits or made into something the original designer hadn't quite planned upon. At school he was definitely in the ZX Spectrum/Magpie/BMX camp, rather than the BBC Micro/Blue Peter/well-behaved group. This is all deeply ironic as he later went on to spend nine years working at the BBC. After a few years of working as a bookseller in Scotland, ("Back when it was actually a skilled profession" he'll tell anyone still listening), he moved to England for reasons he can't quite explain adequately to himself. After a couple of publishing jobs punctuated by sporadic bursts of travelling and photography came the aforementioned nine years at the BBC where he specialised in internet technologies and video. These days his primary interests are Java, Linux, videogames and pies - and if they're not candidates for convergence, then what is?