Born in the United States, this toxic phenomenon which targets video game enthusiasts is gaining alarming proportions in France.
For the generation of young gamers, single-player video gaming has almost become an exception. Today, the virtual spaces of Fortnite, Call of Duty Or League of Legends are real meeting places. Playing with others, in a team or community, has become the preferred way for teenagers to get together after class, to chat through microphones and to share moments of complicity. But this hyper-connectivity and the spirit of competition pushed to the extreme also have their dark side. Indeed, some gamers are ready to do anything to avoid losing the game or taking revenge on the winner.
Thus, for a lost game, a refusal to trade a virtual object or a simple desire to sabotage a rival’s live session, adolescents and young adults are now using a toxic method, born and popularized in the United States, which is becoming very worrying in France. The principle is disconcertingly simple but its consequences are dramatic: behind his keyboard, a malicious Internet user will modify his voice and manipulate the emergency services so that they attack his target, without the latter suspecting anything.
This phenomenon has a name well known to police services: swatting. Taken from the acronym “SWAT” (the elite unit of the American police), this criminal hoax consists of making an anonymous call to the police by inventing a heinous crime at the victim’s home (a hostage-taking, a cold-blooded murder or an imminent bomb threat). In a few minutes, the victim, often a video game player or a live streamer on the internet, sees his door broken down by heavily armed police officers (like RAID or GIGN in France). “A helicopter flies over my house“, writes one player online, when another is surprised in the middle of the game to see the police arriving in his room.
In France, swatting is not just a bad teenage joke. Reporting an imaginary crime to provoke unnecessary emergency intervention is an offense severely punished by the Penal Code. The perpetrators, even minors, risk up to 3 years of imprisonment and a fine of 45,000 euros.
Beyond the immense psychological trauma for the victims, who find themselves robbed by automatic weapons in their homes, this practice exhausts and disperses the police. While elite brigades intervene in a false hostage situation triggered by a disgruntled gamer, they are not available for real emergencies. Faced with this increase, specialist investigators are refining their methods to track down the IP address and identity of these shadow senders, reminding us that a pseudonym on a video game never protects against very real justice.
