Paper links school stabbing to violent video games

Daily Mail references Dark Souls and GTA in post about recent tragedy.
Text: Mike Holmes
Published 2014-04-29

We're not going to give this one too much air, as it's a well-trodden story that's been covered before. However, once again the Daily Mail has been linking real-life tragedy to video games.

In this latest instance, the right-leaning paper mentions the gaming habits of a schoolboy accused of stabbing his teacher at a school in Leeds. While not outright blaming gaming for the tragic events, the article mentions Dark Souls ("where a cursed character travels through a fantasy world killing others") and Grand Theft Auto in the piece, and described the boy as "a depressed loner who spent long periods online playing ultra-violent video games".

As we've mentioned, there's not a lot that we can say here that's not already been covered in more depth elsewhere, but it's sad to see such an influential paper continue to do their damnedest to smear the name of gaming by so obviously linking it to a story as tragic as the murder of teacher Ann Maguire.

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