A Sacramento video game enthusiast was arrested earlier this month after allegedly making violent threats against employees of game company Blizzard Entertainment, as well as fellow gamers and, in a lovely final touch, their children, Polygon reports.
Stephen Cebula is currently being held without bond, and could face up to five years in prison if convicted of making the threats.
As Polygon notes, Cebula’s alleged threats to fellow players of Blizzard’s Heroes of the Storm included:
“I will bomb the new york twin towers [sic],” “Go back to cotton picking” and “You make me want to shoot up an elementary school;” Cebula also threatened to rape and kill the children of his opponents.
After Blizzard banned him from chatting with other players, he allegedly sent the company a message warning that if the company continued
silencing me in Heroes of the Storm … I may or may not pay you a visit with an AK47 amongst some other ‘fun’ tools.
Polygon adds,
This is not Cebula’s first run-in with the law. In March 2015, he was placed on an involuntary psychiatric hold by the Sacramento Sheriff’s Department after telling deputies of his intention to kill someone at a local park, according to the court documents. As a minor, he was also charged with threatening a school staff member.
It’s good to see the FBI and local police taking online threats as seriously as threats delivered offline. Because here’s the thing:
- A threat is a threat if you make it to someone’s face
- A threat is a threat if you send it by mail
- A threat is a threat if you make it over the phone
- A threat is a threat if you write it in icing on a cake
- A threat is a threat if you make it on the internet
- A threat is a threat even if some dude on the internet tells you it’s just a joke
The internet: Part of real life even if some people would like to pretend it isn’t.
H/T — r/GamerGhazi
As someone from Sacramento: Good.
Let this serve as an example to other departments as to what to do when someone feels the need to threaten people.
Though Blizzard should have banned him instead of just silence him on their game.
Well actually it’s about ethics in who gets labeled a terrorist.
One down, several thousand to go.
I recently got back to online gaming, and remembered pretty quickly why I usually steer clear of it.
Sadly that’s just one guy, one drop in a an ocean of shit that gamers have to swim through on a regular basis. Seems that private games are the only safe games.
I guess the problem is one of education ? We’re taught how to behave in society but somehow the Internet doesn’t count as part of it, and behind a pseudonym anything goes. Might be time we start teaching kids that the Internet isn’t, in fact, some miraculous wonderland where acting like a shitstain magically becomes fun and makes you look cool.
Yeah I know, it’s pretty sad that it’d have to be taught in the first place.
ETA : @The Thousand Cock Stare
(by the way your name made me chuckle)
This.
What an asshole. I really feel sorry for him; I can’t imagine how miserable and cut-off he must be to do such things.
Not that that excuses it, of course.
Yaayyyyy, glad it’s being taken seriously by the police.
This is one reason I stick to the fanfiction community and not mess around with games much. Fanfic comms can also be full of drama, but death threats are rare. Unless you’re in One Direction fandom.
Not sure if joke… o_o
Anyway, yeah, finally. I hope it’s one in a line of many many many many to come. Although I can’t help but feel that it’s just because Blizzard and its employees were threatened. Big companies like to throw around their weight. I’m not sure it’d happen if, say, a small indie dev got threatened.
\o/
Things get better, even if at an awfully slow rate.
@ViolinlessHoax : hard to be sure, but in the past Blizzard, and other high profile company, had threats like that, who did not ended up with any legal consequence. So the movement have started. Perhaps it would mostly be for people with enough money to have permanent lawyers, but there’s good hope that it will spread.
Whaaaaaat?
I continue to be amazed at some of the fanfic topics out there.
@pitshade
Ya know, I really should be bored of the whole ‘really about ethics in’, satire thing. But, like… It’s official, that just never gets old
Odds the cops acted that this was serious because it was men getting threatened for a change? :-/
@Sinkable John : if I believe my mother, who professionaly do customer service by phone, it’s not limited to internet. From time to time, I wonder if the jackassery on phone line is not even worse than on internet, but less visible.
Good, about time the law started catching up.
I suppose in real life individuals have to moderate their behavior because they can’t predict the reactions of those around them. If you’re sitting on a bus and you’re inclined to threaten a complete stranger, you have no idea if they’re going to physically attack you in response, or ring up friends for backup; online you can just say what you like and they apparently can’t reach you. That’s the only reason I can fathom that online trolls say the things they would never say in public life; unless it’s Milo Y of course.
@Cygnia – maybe not men, but a large corporation. Money talks, etc.
Often it’s a matter of empathy. “Knowing” that there’s a real person behind the chat box/pixel toon/message board avatar, a real person you’re tearing down, is not the same as feeling it.
But this particular person seems like he doesn’t have great impulse control, for whatever reason, so there’s likely more to it than general asshattery.
@Iseult : not seeing the face of the people you’re tearing down is a big thing in my opinion. I believe it’s one of the problematic side effect of veiled women too.
As someone who grew up trolling–good. Even among trolls, threat-making idiots like this are garbage.
Hey, funny how a post involving video games is up today. So is the newest Tropes Vs. Women.
And I’m going to use your point from now on, David: A threat is a threat, whether it’s in person, on the Internet or written in cake icing.
What lovely news, so since people are going to frame this as a matter of free speech instead of you know, an unstable individual with a record threatening people’s lives and children.
So I find any possible counter argument for this to boil down to “restrict internet freedoms.” “It is our constitutional and inalienable right to send death threats to company employees.” “If we start treating the law like it affects the Internet the government is going to take err freeze peach.” “You can’t catch all of us.”
Except as established that posits the idea that the Internet is uncontested waters as agreed upon by all relevant bodies. Or that if there’s enough criminals doing it don’t bother cause too many. Let’s see where this goes, I want a conviction, it’ll help set a precedent, legal consequences against this plague on the interwebs.
Oh please let there be someone against this to come, I would actually enjoy a conversation to see why this person should not be convicted.
@EJ (The Other One)
What??? You feel sorry for this guy? Not the players he harassed, not the employees he threatened, but this guy? What makes you think he’s miserable and cut-off?
I know a troll. The kind who hurts people intentionally for fun. He’s not miserable. He’s not cut-off. He’s very sociable, an extrovert actually. Know why he does it? He thinks it’s just words on a screen and thinks it’s funny when people get upset. It amuses him. That’s all. Don’t waste sympathy on assholes. They’re not downtrodden; they’re just assholes.
Tangent, but related to people being shitty to people they don’t know:
I was vaguely amused by Blizzard’s decision in Hearthstone to not allow direct typed communication with your opponent, but only allow communication through canned, “polite” statements like “thank you” and “I’m sorry.” Of course, as soon as people get hold of the game they find ways to make even those statements rude and offensive, e.g. by saying “thank you” right as you beat someone.
I just don’t understand the human compulsion to be mean to people for no good reason.
@invivoMark, Men’s Rice Activist
Sadism and power mostly.
Good. We need more accountability on the internet.
There are only two problems I see:
1) The threatened party, as was pointed out upthread, was a major corporation.
2) (TW: ableist language) If he was placed on an involuntary psychiatric hold, what do you want to bet that this gets portrayed as ‘one crazy person doing crazy things’, and the actual issues of online jackassedry (I may have just made up that word) get swept into a corner?
Reminds me why I always turn off chat in WoW and go quest by myself. Haven’t done dungeons since medical school.
Honestly, neither am I. You hear terrible things in that fandom, but I’m never sure how far it actually goes, and I’m in it. I’ve been in over-enthusiastic, super-invested music fandoms before, but this one has a nasty edge. One of the members of the group got enough Twitter-hate that it influenced his decision to drink heavily.