Have you heard of a sickening suicide game called ‘Momo suicide challenge’ lately? Microsoft discovered the fictional character Momo on its popular online game ‘Minecraft’ and has since removed the character from the game which is popular among children. The Momo suicide game garnered attention recently when it started spreading on WhatsApp prompting users to do certain deeds such as self-harm or even kill someone or suicide.
The game works by adding a contact on user’s WhatsApp account from where, the moderator or those who run the game contact the user urging his/her to perform certain tasks and if denied, give dire threats and curse warnings. The game is similar to Blue Whale challenge that resulted in tens of deaths in U.S. and Russia among other countries.
According to the reports, the viral Momo suicide challenge is expected to be behind two 12-year-old girls killing their classmate in Wisconsin. A similar suicide case of a 12-year-old in a district of Escobar is being linked to the game as well. Momo is a fictional character who has a grotesque image with chicken features and huge eyes popping up of the sockets and a similar character appeared on children’s game Minecraft where the girl named ‘Mod’ runs behind Minecraft players (in the game) holding a phone with a WhatsApp icon.
Mojang, the developers of Minecraft which is owned by Microsoft found out that a creator named Mod created the character using Minecraft’s personalized character feature and has been working on getting rid of the character. In a further report, a police officer in Ohio stated how his 7-year-old boy came across ‘Mod’ while watching a Minecraft’s episode on YouTube where an ad for the suicide game appeared.
The game starts with users being instructed to perform certain tasks causing self-harm or even suicide and when the user refused to do it, the character would either curse or threat the users of appearing at night and since the game largely targets teens and children who are more susceptible to such threats, they end up doing what is being instructed to avoid any direful consequences. We advise our users to keep an eye on kids playing any game or doing any activity on the web as they are more susceptible to fall in such games.