An incident between Twitch streamer Buddha and other players roleplaying as police on the Grand Theft Auto V NoPixel server yesterday highlighted a growing rift over the in-game meta and player conduct.
Buddha, playing as his popular roleplay character Lang Buddha, was conducting a heist alongside two other characters, Yung Dab and Slim. At one point, Slim held a woman at gunpoint. Unfortunately, that woman turned out to be an undercover police officer, something Buddha seemed to have never heard of happening. Two other cops swarmed to the woman’s aid and held Slim at gunpoint in response.
Cleverly, Buddha came to the rescue by acting as a tow truck driver and giving Slim the opportunity to climb a fence and escape the situation—for the time being.
Quickly, approximately four cop cars and a police helicopter were pursuing Buddha’s vehicle. As Buddha drove away, an officer on the sidewalk fired on their truck with an automatic rifle. Buddha stopped the car and told Slim to escape on foot, but Slim instead exited the vehicle and began returning fire.
To run faster, as well as to destroy evidence, Buddha consumed cocaine and began running. As he got off the road and headed toward the treeline, officers were still firing at him. Keep in mind, Buddha at this point had not fired a bullet, let alone drawn a weapon.
It became a one-vs-one footrace with Buddha being tailed by a lone officer. Without any orders to stop or warning shots being fired, the cop shot Buddha several times with his gun, incapacitating him.
Buddha was absolutely livid with the cop’s decision to shoot. The rules of playing on the NoPixel server ask players to prioritize allowing scenarios to unfold by playing along. With this in mind, the cop’s decision to end the scenario by shooting an unarmed player instead of letting things play out was very frustrating for Buddha.
“I’m not even mad, chat, I’m just disappointed,” Buddha said. “There was absolutely zero need to shoot me there. I had no gun out, I was running away, I didn’t fire a single shot, they opened fire first. They had a helicopter, three-four cop cars, I’m on foot? There was no need to shoot me there, dude.”
“I get scrutinized for shooting cops and not initiating {…} over one incident, and then these things happen multiple times, it’s just so hard not to talk about dude,” Buddha said.
Later on while in jail, Buddha declared that “war is coming,” as retribution for how the police treated him.
Buddha is not alone in his frustration. For NoPixel players who choose to roleplay as criminals, they aren’t able to develop storylines or scenarios when cops use deadly force so quickly. There’s a growing sentiment among NoPixel players that the in-game cops are becoming somewhat power hungry and are now more concerned with beating the bad guys than they are with playing along to let organic scenarios develop and flourish.
People from Buddha’s chat eventually pointed out that when the police initially confronted his friend Slim, it was because he had pointed a gun at someone. As far as the cops were concerned, the suspects were now considered armed and dangerous. That still left open the question of why the police opened fire on the vehicle as it was fleeing, however.
Police roleplayers, on the other hand, may argue that the arrests and subsequent trials are a scenario in itself, and that they wouldn’t be properly playing their role as police if they didn’t stop every crime as soon as possible.
Either way, it appears that NoPixel and GTA roleplaying in some ways has created an interesting social experiment into what happens when everyday people are assigned different societal roles. Fortunately for all those viewing, it’s been an enthralling and entertaining spectacle.
