Video game censorship
[1][2][3][4] In 2005, David Gauntlett claimed that grant funding, news headlines, and professional prestige more commonly go to authors who, in good faith, promote anti-media beliefs.
[citation needed] Some ratings of controversial games indicate they are not targeted at young children ("Mature" (M) or "Adults Only" (AO) in the US, or 15 or 18 in the UK).
Reported by Bloomberg, metaphorically speaking, Cai Wu, head of China's Ministry of Culture, said "We want to open the window a crack to get some fresh air, but we still need a screen to block the flies and mosquitoes.".
In 2004, Hearts of Iron was banned as the Ministry of Culture deemed the games portrayal of World War II to be distorted.
[22] In Germany, the Unterhaltungssoftware Selbstkontrolle (Entertainment Software Self-Regulation) has been responsible for assigning age ratings for video games since 1994.
In the past, particularly violent games were often censored by the developer or publisher in order to receive a lower rating and avoid indexing.
[23] Another censored video game in Germany was Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, where Hitler's famous mustache was removed and swastikas were replaced with triangular symbols.
[24] On August 9, 2018, USK announced that the German government will relax this Section § 86a restriction on video games, as long as the imagery included falls within the "social adequacy" allowance.
USK will still evaluate how this imagery is used and reject games they believe fail to meet the social adequacy allowance.
[26] In Germany video games can be indexed by the Bundeszentrale für Kinder- und Jugendmedienschutz (Federal Agency for Child and Youth Protection in the Media) on the government side.
[36] The VGV was launched in 2006 by the ESA, and uses social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to inform members of allies and opponents.
This included opposing a bipartisan federal bill that would direct the National Academy of Sciences to study the effects of all forms of violent media.
[38] Such bills themselves had come under criticisms from some scholars for pressuring scientists to find specific outcomes rather than studying the issues neutrally[39][40] The regulation of video games have been historically supported by politicians such as Joe Lieberman and Hillary Clinton, who have pushed legislation for regulating video games.
This bill called for a label to be placed in a "clear and conspicuous location on the packaging" on all video games with an ESRB rating of T (Teen) or higher stating, "WARNING: Excessive exposure to violent video games and other violent media has been linked to aggressive behavior.
The case centered on a California law that sought to restrict sales of violent video games to minors.
The video game industry, led by the Entertainment Merchants Association and the Entertainment Software Association, successfully obtained an injunction on the bill, believing that the definition of violence as stated in the California law was too vague and would not treat video games as protected speech.
The majority of the justices did not consider the studies brought to their attention as convincing evidence of harm, and stated that they could not create a new class of restricted speech that was not applied to other forms of media.
[55] On 3 April 2013, Dianne Feinstein, a Californian senator and Democrat, spoke in San Francisco to a group of 500 constituents about gun violence.
