Murdered because of a virtual weapon

In China they’ve convicted an online gamer for murder of another online gamer at a real life confrontation about a virtaul weapon from the gamer Legend of Mir III. The weapon was the “Dragon sabre” that the convicted Qui Chengwei, 41, had lent to another gamer, Zhu Caoyuan. Zhu made the misstake of selling the weapon without asking Qui. Qui reported this fraud to the police but since it was only a virtual possession Zhu could not press charges.

Qui contronted Zhu and demanded to get the 7200 yuan (~$1000!) that he made on the sale. When he didn’t get his money back Qui got tired of Zhu and attacked him an early morning and killed him with a series of knife stabs and then turned himself in to the police. The victims father wanted Qui sentenced to death and so has happened but the punishment can be limited to 15 years in jail if he keeps up a good conduct.

We have to be glad that these things are very rare and even if many doesn’t want to say that this is in any way related to the violence you can find in games it sure is proof that bad things can spawn from any occation. It shows that laws on virtual possessions maybe should be considered since this tragedy could’ve been avoided if the police would’ve had the right to interfere.

Source: CBC News