Tag: laws

Reminder: Playing PUBG Is A Criminal Offense In Gujarat


PUBG Mobile: It’s not just a shooter you can play while walking down the street, it’s also a crime if you live in the Indian state of Gujarat.

It may sound like a joke that over a dozen people have been arrested after being spotted playing the battle royale shooter, but more than a dozen people in India found out the hard way just how serious the police are taking this law. The Indian Express reported this week that ten people were arrested for playing the shooter, following the game’s ban earlier this month. According to the same news story, twelve cases have been registered so far in the city of Rajkot.

“Our team caught these youths red-handed. They were taken into custody after they were found playing the PUBG game. We have registered two cases against them under IPC Section 188 for violating the notification issued by Police Commissioner and under Section 35 of the Rajkot police arrests 10 for playing PUBG despite ban Gujarat Police Act,” SOG police inspector Rohit Raval told The Indian Express.

Six more youths were arrested for playing PUBG despite the outright ban on the title. PUBG received a ban by police commissioner Manoj Agarwal, who stated his opposition to addictive mobile games negatively impacting behavior, attitude, and language of students and children.

In Response To Gambling Laws, Square Enix Starts Pulling Titles From Belgium


Earlier this year the Belgian government gave a clear warning to game developers: Fall into line with your gambling mechanics or face potential criminal charges including fines and even jail sentences. Over the last seven months, we’ve seen the industry take the threat very seriously (for the most part). Companies like Blizzard and Valve have simply stopped allowing players within Belgium to purchase loot boxes, while Electronic Arts stood its ground and is now facing a criminal investigation.

Companies like Square Enix, meanwhile, are just pulling out of the country entirely. Square announced that at least four of its titles will no longer be accessible from Belgium as of December. Those titles include Final Fantasy: Brave Exvius, Mobius Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts Union X, and Dissidia FInal Fantasy Opera Omina. All four games will no longer be accessible in Belgium over the next month, although it isn’t clear if people will be able to circumvent the block with a VPN or if Square Enix will go as far as to disable existing accounts that have been operated from within Belgium.

(Source: GI.biz)

Belgium Criminalizes Certain Lootboxes, Sends Threat To Developers


The first answer to any question of “is this legal” is “where?” Belgium has joined the growing list of countries to declare that lootboxes, in some fashion, constitute an illegal form of gambling. The Belgium Gaming Commission determined this week that FIFA 18, Overwatch, and Counter Strike: Global Offensive violate its gambling laws and has demanded that developers remove them with the threat of large fines and remarkably even prison sentences if their demands are not met.

Belgium’s Gaming Commission in its notice specifically directed at the following types of monetization. Please note that the below has been translated into English.

  • Emotional profit forecast: uncertainty loot box is linked to profit forecast;
  • A player may think that the purchase of a loot box gives an advantage, which is not always the case
  • Confusion of fiction and reality: well-known real people promote the most expensive loot boxes;
  • Use your own coin system: for a real amount, players can buy in-game coins;
  • Apparently infinite methods to deposit money on player accounts;
  • Hide from the random generator or at least its opacity.

It does not appear that any explicit timetable has been set for removal of said loot boxes.

(Source: Belgium Gaming Commission)

Chaturday: Have You Thanked Your Local National Supreme Court Today?


Given the recent climate in and around the gaming industry, the average gamer can’t really be faulted for being at least a little afraid of the path that our beloved medium is heading down, one that millions of you have turned into an industry larger than television and film.

After all, certain forces have seemingly catapulted their efforts to demonize violent video games, ignoring all evidence to the contrary, and the White House and President himself have invited those very people to hammer down on their propaganda. People like Dave Grossman, who famously referred to violent games as “murder simulators,” would be pushing his unsupported views on a president whose own quotes seem to imply a rather lackadaisical view on the whole matter:

“It’s so incredible. I see it. I get to see things that you would be — you’d be amazed at. I have a young — very young son who — I look at some of the things he’s watching, and I say, ‘How is that possible?’ And this is what kids are watching.”

We shouldn’t be scared, and I can sum up why with one Supreme Court ruling with one majority opinion written by one Justice Antonin Scalia.

One constant throughout the industry is that retail stores do not sell (to the best of their ability) mature games to underage customers, but the reason why isn’t as clearly understood. Ask around and you’re bound to hear answers from both customers and retail workers that the reason is because it’s illegal, others point to store policy. The latter are correct.

There are no laws on the books in the United States that criminalize the sale of mature rated games to underage customers and if there are, they’ve gone unnoticed due to not being enforced, and if they’ve been enforced they’ve been overturned. Of all the things I talk about being without precedent, this is definitely not one of them.

And you can thank Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Senator Leland Yee for this ruling, because in 2005 the California State Legislature passed a law that banned the sale of violent games to anyone under 18 and imposed a fine of up to $1,000 for each violation. Senator Yee sponsored the bill and Governor Schwarzenegger signed it. A strong proponent of regulating video games, Lee was later arrested in 2014 and convicted of felony racketeering, money laundering, public corruption, after he was caught buying firearms from Philippine terrorists and attempted to sell them to an undercover FBI agent.

Representatives of the industry including the Entertainment Software Association were successful in suing the bill before it went into effect, with California appealing to the Ninth Circuit Court, only to have the court find the act unconstitutional as it compelled speech that was not factual (the law required violent games to affix a warning to each box). The law was appealed again and went all the way up to the United States Supreme Court.

In 2011, the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that the law was unconstitutional and violated the first and fourteenth amendments. Majority opinion was written by Justice Scalia who noted the lack of compelling evidence linking video games and violent behavior, the successful self-regulation implemented via the ESRB, and the notion that violent games were entitled to just as much protection as violent cartoons like Looney Tunes.

So if you’re afraid of a looming war against games, don’t be. The organizations that fought against the bill in California and the nearly dozen other states where similar laws cropped up are still around, the ESA wouldn’t let such legislation go without a fight, and we have the Supreme Court on our side ruling that any such legislation would be unconstitutional.

Other than that, I have no opinion on the matter.