Board Thread:New on Sword Art Online Wiki/@comment-64.121.192.163-20170726013827/@comment-172.92.100.20-20200707051424

The reason he rigged the NerveGear to kill people is "easy": he didn't want people to leave. This was merely a threat that enforced the lock-in. If there was no death, people would just remove helmets and there would be no issue.

The problem with this is that we still don't know why he didn't want people logging out in the first place. Why would he rather kill someone than let them leave his game without at least one person beating it? As far as we can tell, at least in-universe, SAO is a pretty compelling game with amazing sales numbers(even if it doesn't stack up in real life terms). As has been said above, people would probably have liked his game no matter what, and being the first Full Dive game there would be those who would defend it vehemently(hell, people defend shitty games...).

So the lack of explanation really just points to Akihiko perhaps being criminally insane, having some sort of God-Complex. You don't forget why you murdered thousands of people and ruined tens of thousands of lives unless you're a few screws loose to begin with, much less do it in the first place.

So...I don't really care what his reason was, just so long as somebody hunts down his digital ghost and deletes it before does a repeat.