On April 8, a gamer in Las Vegas, Nevada was apprehended by police officers, and faces terrorism charges over extreme statements made in Blizzard Entertainment MOBA, Heroes of the Storm. Blizzard alerted authorities after Michael Mickowski, 26, apparently sent in-game chat messages threatening to commit a mass shooting at an elementary school.

While playing the game, Mickowski wrote, "Someday, when I have enough money to buy a gun and some ammunition I will shoot up a school where I live." The Heroes of the Storm player also wrote, "Imagine if I decided to go to an elementary school too. Instead of a high school or middle school imagine. I’ll buy a gun and shoot everyone I can." Mickowski also suggested that he would stream the mass shooting on the Amazon-owned live streaming platform, Twitch.

One of the "other dark statements" made by Mickowski according to the arrest report was, "Promise, watch me blow the head off a 5-year-old with a 12-gauge shotgun.” In the report, police said that there are 18 elementary schools within a 2-mile radius of Mickowski's home and it was only the lack of money that "a mass casualty, active shooter event has not occurred at the hands of Mickowski."

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Authorities were able to identify and locate Mickowski through the IP address he used to play Heroes of the Storm. When questioned by police at his home, Mickowski admitted to making "bombastic statements" in the online multiplayer game. However, the Heroes of the Storm player is said not to have provided specifics when police asked if he had done anything in the game that would cause police to show up at his door. Police took Mickowski into custody and he is now being held at the Clark County Detention Center with bail set at $150,000 and a preliminary hearing scheduled to take place on April 25, 2019.

This is not the first time that someone has been arrested for threats made while playing Heroes of the Storm. Several years ago, a Heroes of the Storm player was arrested by the FBI for death threats made against Blizzard. The threats came after Blizzard issued a ban over other threats and racial slurs made against other players of the game.

Beyond Heroes of the Storm, other games and platforms have also had a problem with in-game threats. A 45-year-old Fortnite player threatened to kill someone after losing a match, while a Twitch streamer made headlines after threatening to hire someone to kill a user in the chat.

Heroes of the Storm is available for PC.

Source: KTNV