So I'm VR you decide to virtually punch another person's avatar ..have you really assaulted them? No physical actions have occured,no contact made..however you may have caused distress to the other VR user.
Should this be a real life crime?

What about walking upto' a female avatar and slapping her backside? What about groping ?
Again no real life touching has occured..should this be an offense that's able to be prosecuted?
I feel if you are wilfully causing distress then yeah..why not prosecute?

Then again I've killed cops in GTA and shot people in Call Of Duty. .god damn it...I'm looking at a long time in the slammer!

Just dont drop the soap in the shower ogdenz

Wot.

The police can't be really looking into it. Surely that's just something they said to shut someone up.

wait till they hear about comment sections

What? Like in an online multiplayer game or something? Wouldn't it rather depend on the game and what playing the game involves? The whole point of some games is to virtually assualt each others characters and blow them into tiny virtual pieces, for example. If the game developers have included the ability for avatars to not only ''virtually assault'' other player's avatars somehow but which can also be ''virtually assaulted'' themselves, then isn't that a part of the game? Else why did the programmers include such a thing in said game in the first place?

This all sounds extremely legally dubious to me somehow. I could imagine them having to put disclaimers in games and have people sign up to online consent agreements before they can play maybe.

It's getting into thought crimes territory if you ask me. What even counts as being ''virtual assault'' anyway?

Operation Thought Crime