Separating a hardcore gamer from the copy of GTA IV that he waited for in a launch line?
Absolutely criminal, said a judge in Great Britain. As reported by the Leyland Guardian, Marc Hughes, 21, and Oliver Aindow, 18, not only stole their victim's copy of the game but also broke his nose and jaw.
So, were these two a couple of violence-crazed gamers who were desperate for their own GTA IV fix?
Hardly. The pair promptly sold the game for cash. As Judge Beverley Lunt told the pair in court:
By your own admission this was a pre-planned robbery. You saw that this shop was opening at midnight to sell this X-Box game. You dressed yourselves in hoods. You deliberately used bushes as cover to stalk your victim and ambush him and for what? For an X-Box game, valued at £40 which you sold for £20.
This is extraodinarily gratuitous violence because the whole thing was conducted in silence. There was no demand for the game to be handed over. It is only at the end when he is lying bleeding, having had his jaw broken and his nose broken that you took the game from his hand.
Judge Lunt sentenced Hughes and Aindow to two years each.
Comments
Re: GTA IV Robbers Get II Years in Prison
Oh, so it's ok that they handed the guy a beatdown but only stole his game. I understand now.
Re: GTA IV Robbers Get II Years in Prison
Nonsense! These innocent young men were out for an invigorating midnight stroll and without warning they were infected with the nightmare spores emitted by GTA and suddenly became a professional pre-meditated violent assault team, THE LIKE OF WHICH YOU SEE IN VIDEO GAMES!!!!
Sorry, I think I was posessed by the ghost of jack thompson there. What? He's not dead? Oh, it must have been the ghost of his career...
Re: GTA IV Robbers Get II Years in Prison
Don't worry, it's happened to me before too.
Re: GTA IV Robbers Get II Years in Prison
THis is oen of those incidences that seems to make the anti gamer arguments fall apart
Yeah
I mean, if we gamers were even half the blood-crazed psychopaths that the critics are convinced we are, it would be the mugger, not the victim, that would have been lying in a bloodied, mangled heap.