Police Called About Gunshots, Ends Up Being California Resident Playing Game Too Loudly

Police in northern California responded to a call over the weekend about potential gunshots and shouting. It turned out the noise was simply someone playing video games loudly with a window open – no danger was present.

On November 22nd, the Chico Police Department received a report about concerning noises – described as “threatening words” and “pop sounds.” As reported by Action News Now and spotted by Kotaku, officers investigated and discovered the sounds were coming from a video game. It’s unclear what game was being played, or if the person was yelling while playing online.

One likely candidate for the source of the sounds is Battlefield 6, which has had the best first-month sales of any US shooter since 2022. EA recently reported 7 million copies sold. However, it could also be a different popular shooter like Call of Duty: Black Ops 7. It’s also possible the player was enjoying a game like Arc Raiders or even the long-running favorite, Grand Theft Auto V. Recent Nintendo games such as Pokemon Legends: Z-A and Kirby Air Riders are probably not the source, though.

It looks like this situation was just a misunderstanding, but there’s a history of issues between police and video game streamers. For over ten years, a dangerous prank called ‘swatting’ – falsely reporting a serious emergency to get police to someone’s house – has been a problem. Back in 2015, a 13-year-old who played Minecraft got into serious trouble with the law for supposedly doing it three times.

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2025-11-26 20:09