The GLHF (Good Luck Have Fun) Game Bar was hosting one of several qualifier rounds for the Madden Classic, an Electronic Arts-sponsored tournament series. The perpetrator, 24-year-old David Katz from Baltimore, Maryland, was a competitive Madden player who had previously won $10,000 at a 2017 Madden tournament. After losing several rounds that knocked him out of finals contention, witnesses reported Katz was acting strangely and refused to shake hands with his opponents. He left the venue briefly and returned with a handgun. Katz fired twelve shots, killing two people and wounding ten others before taking his own life. One additional person was injured while fleeing. First responders arrived within two minutes of the first 911 call. Due to the venue's location next to the St. Johns River, the Coast Guard was called in to sweep surrounding waterways while SWAT teams evacuated and cleared the building.

What made this shooting unusual was its audience. The tournament was being livestreamed on Twitch, and the moment of the attack was captured on the broadcast. The footage was uploaded to YouTube and circulated widely before platforms could remove it. Tournament participants reported the incident on social media at 1:34 PM, nearly forty minutes before the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office confirmed fatalities on Twitter at 2:45 PM. The speed of information, and misinformation, was staggering. Far-right media outlets misidentified a Minnesota man with a similar Reddit username as the shooter, prompting a harassment campaign before the error was corrected. The real-time nature of the violence, witnessed by an online audience before anyone in authority had spoken, marked a grim milestone in how mass casualty events unfold in the age of streaming.

Electronic Arts cancelled the three remaining Madden Classic qualifier tournaments and donated to support the victims' families. The impact rippled far beyond one game publisher. Organizers of PAX, the Game Developers Conference, E3, the Insomnia Gaming Festival, the League of Legends Championship Series, and the Evolution Championship Series all announced enhanced security measures for upcoming events. Until that August afternoon, esports tournaments had operated more like casual gatherings than professional sporting events. The Jacksonville shooting forced the competitive gaming industry to confront a reality that other professional sports had grappled with for decades: when you bring large crowds together, security cannot be an afterthought. The conversation about protecting players and fans at gaming events, once nonexistent, became permanent.

In the days following the shooting, the gaming community mourned in its own language. Bungie observed a day of silence across all its Destiny channels on August 27. Bethesda offered support. OpTic Gaming held a charity livestream on August 31 with proceeds going to the victims' families. Hundreds of people attended a vigil at the GLHF Game Bar's doors. Jacksonville Landing itself, the indoor marketplace that had been a downtown anchor since its opening, was later demolished as part of a redevelopment plan. The site along the St. Johns River where competitors once gathered over controllers and screens is now open ground. Five years later, on August 26, 2023, another mass shooting struck Jacksonville when a gunman killed three people at a Dollar General store. Investigators stated they believed the date was deliberately chosen to coincide with the anniversary of the Landing shooting, binding two tragedies across time in the same city.