Sometimes, people just take some things too seriously and get salty, even in gacha games.
On March 29, the police arrested a 25-year-old nursing home employee in Yoshinogawa City, Tokushima. The man was reported to have sent a threatening message to media and video game company Square Enix and was charged for forcible obstruction of business and intimidation.
The content of the message says the following: “[Square Enix] staff, I’m coming to kill you tomorrow. Purify your heads [for a beheading].”
According to police reports, the unnamed suspect left the message in a questionnaire for a role-playing game by Square Enix last February 5. This has alarmed the company and to increase security. Square Enix also confirmed they received around 30 messages with the word “kill” since September last year. Evidence and thorough investigation has lead the police to the suspect.
The suspect admitted to the charges and said that he had written those messages as a way to “seek revenge”. It was found out that he had already spent more than 200,000 yen (around $1,795 USD) to obtain a special in-game item but did not get it.
Gacha games have become one of the most popular video games being played in various smartphone and mobile devices. Some of these games have special events where players have the opportunity to obtain rare or even super rare in-game characters and items in which they can use to complete quests or even get more characters and other items.
While obtaining the item requirements can be collected through game quests, you also have the option to spend to obtain these by using real currency. However, let us not forget the fact that buying the said items needed for your gacha rolls is still and will always be a game of chance and luck.
This isn’t the first time someone got arrested for trying to obtain a special character or item in a video game. In fact last year, a hardcore 29-year-old Kantai Collection fan raided a game store just to obtain the new arcade cards for the franchise’s arcade game. He was found by authorities around 2:30am behind a game machine with a screwdriver and crowbar.
Source: Hachima Kiko, Yomiuri Shimbun, ANN
