It feels like this argument has been raised pretty much since videogames existed. I remember seeing someone describing a really crappy old Atari 2600 game as being "a gateway drug to violence and mysogeny" - the game in question? General Custer, a pixelated priapic and utterly ridiculous game where a good ol' rootin' tootin' cowboy general shuffled around the screen sticking his blocky member into busty squaws tied to posts. I once played this, purely because I wanted to see how bad it was (the defence of anyone with a modicum of curiosity I guess), and it was badddddd.
Rambling aside, it did not turn me into a woman-hating would-be general intent on spreading my seed via nefarious means. I shrugged, and moved on.
Years later, when videogames started to take on more graphical finesse, the argument came up again. Remember the furore around Mortal Kombat and Night Trap? It seems almost hilarious to view these games with 21st century eyes as being anything but entertainment, yet they were practically cited as the reason for the downfall of American youth at one point.
Skip ahead a few years, and the header image game - Manhunt. So many ways to destroy your enemies in the game, most of which were pretty gross but again Rockstar got it in the neck for producing a "murder simulator that could lead to people trying to act out those actions in real life" - Does anyone remember that famous case where a teenage psychopath went on a murderous spree after playing it? No, me neither, because no such thing ever happened.
Then there are games like Call of Duty which have been games dragged into the school shootings in the US. Let's politely ignore the fact that the US gun laws are ludicrous, and you can buy a firearm in Target or Walmart with very few checks, nope, let's blame games instead.
And of course now folk are looking at Grand Theft Auto 6. Not just from the violence aspect, but from the sex and drugs and general rock and roll that always accompany GTA titles. I remember playing GTA San Andreas and one section where you muscle into a crack house, to find a couple going at it, and a bunch of junkies spaced out around the place. I remember shrugging and moving on with the mission, completing it and various other violent / non-violent missions in the game with no burning desire to do any of those things in real life.
I guess the point I'm getting at here is that if you're the kind of person who is so detached from humanity that you would consider murder or violence in the first place, playing a violent videogame probably won't make much difference to your already damaged state of mind. You're beyond the point where you consider other humans as anything but obstacles to be removed. Thankfully the majority of people in the world aren't like that, but it does sometimes feel that the world is a far more dangerous place than it actually is (mostly because spreading news items about nefarious deeds or showing in-depth true crime documentaries on whatever your favourite streaming platforms are kinda goes with the modern territory of human life).
The reason videogames get it in the neck more than movies are probably because folk assume taking control of a virtual avatar in a game is very close to actually taking control of your own actions and performing those acts. How many times have you considered 'murdering' your colleagues at work, or 'murdering' the stupid idiot who pulled out of a side road and nearly took the nose off your car? Or umpteen other moments in your life where you've wished a gigantic foot would come down from on high and squash those people flat?
GTA 6 won't lead to an epidemic of violence but there will absolutely be a case one day where a disturbed individual - who just happened to have videogames as a spare time pursuit - does something that some lazy newshound will try and link to their playing of the game. But that's all it is, lazy journalism, not backed up by any psychological studies into the adverse effects of violent videogames (most studies indicate that there is no link between violent behaviour and playing violent videogames in the majority of cases, but you cannot rule out extremely impressionable individuals who would probably go that way via other influences if they didn't play games).
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