Philippines blocks GoreBox gaming app after school shooting kills three

Philippine authorities have temporarily blocked the online gaming app GoreBox days after a rare school shooting in the south-east Asian country killed three students and injured 20 others.

Investigators said that one of the two teenagers accused of opening fire on students at San Jose National high school in Tacloban city had regularly played the game, which allows players to use various weapons and depicts graphic violence.

GoreBox is described on Google Play as allowing gamers to “engage in brutal combat with an extensive arsenal of weapons and explosives, and witness the raw effects of realistic rag-doll physics and an intense gore system that brings dismemberment to life”.

Launched in 2023 by F2 Games, GoreBox has more than 10m downloads on Google Play and carries an R18+ rating by the International Age Rating Coalition owing to its depictions of extreme violence.

The company did not immediately respond to questions from the Guardian. Scientific studies have repeatedly found there is no credible link between video games and real-life violence. A 2020 meta-analysis of several studies found the long-term impacts of violent games on youth aggression were “near zero”.

Read more: The Guardian (UK)