We have an update on a troubling situation that affected live events planned last year by Nintendo.
Last December, we reported that the Splatoon Koshien 2023 National Finals, which was coming this December 16-17, 2023, and Nintendo Live 2024, which was happening on January 20-21, 2024, were cancelled.
At the time, Nintendo confirmed that they received threats that were being made vs. Nintendo employees, event staff, and even attendees. They admitted to being unprepared to make the security measures needed, and so decided to cancel these events instead.
In the fallout of that, Nintendo would end up releasing two performances on YouTube, that were originally intended for those events. These would be the Splatoon 3 Live Concert, featuring Deep Cut, and The Legend of Zelda Orchestra Concert.
As reported by GoNintendo, Japanese authorities traced the suspect and were able to arrest him. They also disclosed that the suspect is a man in his 20s, who made 39 individual threats. Upon his arrest, the suspect claimed to have made these threats to fight against shitty games.
When he was brought to court, however, the suspect came clean. He admitted to having made these threats, and gave this truly bizarre rationale:
“The more I lost [in Splatoon 3], the more frustrated I would become.”
At this point we would have to point out that anger management issues are not the same thing as having a genetic or recurrent mental health condition. In America, a lot of car accidents go to court as a result of road rage. It’s clearly understood there that drivers who get into a road rage are not insane by medical definition, but they may react irrationally because of poor coping skills.
The situation certainly adds a strange dimension to the frequently recurring conversation about video games inspiring or causing violence. Nobody would seriously claim that a child friendly game like Splatoon 3 motivated real life violence, in the same way that people claimed the same thing of Grand Theft Auto, for example.
This doesn’t exonerate every video game of never being the reason that an individual becomes violent. But it’s a clear case that the game’s content could not possibly be something that the player sought to imitate in real life.
Instead, this is similar to the unfortunate Kyoto Animation arson attack. An animation studio known for romance and comedy shows like Clannad and K-On didn’t make any content that could be imitated into violence. These were clearly just the bad intentions of the perpetrator.
This isn’t a pleasant story to report on, but it should make us vigilant on potentially dangerous situations. Nintendo made the right choices that kept everyone safe, even if they were disappointing and unpopular decisions at the time.
