The Video Game Violence Panic Is Back Just in Time for GTA 6

It's not a proper Grand Theft Auto launch without the finger pointing and blaming and it looks like mainstream media has finally set its sights on Vice City and Leonida. In Australia a newspaper has tied a violent attack to a suspect's taste for violent video games. In the United States, television hosts are slamming Grand Theft Auto VI content before anyone can play it.

The Australian story is particularly grim. The Herald Sun ran coverage of Brendan Nugent, the 43-year-old charged over a targeted car attack on Independent MP Helen Haines outside her Victoria electorate office, an attack that left her in critical condition. Police allege it was deliberate. Alongside the reporting on the charges, the paper highlighted Nugent's fixation on violent video games, with headlines about a "lawless fantasy world," implying that the games had something to do with it.

Pinning a crime on a suspect's hobbies is one of the oldest post-tragedy coverage in the world but study after study has failed to find a reliable causal link between violent games and serious real-world violence. The American Psychological Association has tied them only to small, short-term changes in aggression in lab settings and, in fact, violent crime has fallen across much of the world over the same decades that games grew more popular and more realistic. We made this case plainly once already before when he explained that Grand Theft Auto V doesn't breed terrorists and Scientific American brought up similar evidence back in August.

To be fair, it's easier to blame a single, simple cause than the tangle of mental health, circumstance and personal history that's responsible for most serious crime. Games make a convenient target because they are popular, visible and easy to find in almost any young person's life.

The American complaint is just as familiar. On Fox & Friends Weekend, hosts and commentators went after GTA 6's crime, violence and adult content, questioning why grown adults would want to play it at all. The more reasonable explanation though is a game this explicit should be kept away from children. It is not evidence that the game creates criminals.

GTA 6 is not sneaking its content past anyone. It carries an adult rating in every major market, Mature 17+ from the ESRB, PEGI 18 in Europe and R18+ in Australia, each citing intense violence, sex and drug use. Those ratings exist for exactly this reason, so adults can make an informed choice and parents can keep the game out of young hands. The system built to handle mature content is already doing its job here.

None of this is new. Every major GTA has met the same wall. Australia refused to classify Grand Theft Auto III in 2001, effectively banning it until a modified version shipped. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas lost its rating in 2005 over the hidden "Hot Coffee" content, pulled from shelves in the US and banned in Australia until it was edited. Lawyer Jack Thompson built a whole campaign on suing over game violence before Take-Two Interactive and others pushed back. The "murder simulator" label has followed the series for more than twenty years to the point the US government once tried to shut Rockstar down. GTA V drew protests too and still went on to become one of the best-selling games ever made.

There are two conversations getting tangled here. One is about keeping adult games away from kids and this is what ratings are for. The other is about blaming a video game for a real attack on a real person, doing a disservice to everyone involved, the victim most of all.

GTA 6 launches on November 19 with the same adult rating as any other mature title. The same tired headlines are showing up right on schedule.