Games for the protocol – Newspaper Kommersant No. 217 (7418) dated 11/23/2022

Roskomnadzor structures propose new measures to regulate the gaming industry and related areas, including determining the legal status of in-game items, as well as forcing sites to comply with the requirements of the Yarovaya package, that is, store information about user messages and provide access to them to investigating authorities. According to Kommersant, measures are already being discussed with business. Market participants look at the initiative with caution: its implementation will require new investments in infrastructure and pose risks for game publishers.

“Kommersant” got acquainted with the study of the Main Radio Frequency Center of Roskomnadzor (GRCHTS; the structure is responsible, among other things, for searching the Internet for prohibited information), dedicated to the prospects for regulating the gaming industry and its content. In particular, the agency wants to determine the legal status of game currency (virtual money inside games that can be purchased for real money), loot boxes (lootbox – a virtual box with a random set of items), streaming platform and donations (donation to the streamer from the viewer).

The GRFC also proposes to recognize gaming platforms and streaming services for gamers as information dissemination organizers (ARIs). According to the Federal Law “On Information”, PIOs are required to store in Russia such data as the fact of receiving, transmitting, delivering and processing voice information, texts, images and other electronic messages of users, as well as providing this data to investigating authorities upon their request. To do this, sites must install equipment for operational-search activities (SORM) on their networks.

In fact, we are talking about expanding the requirements of the “Yarovaya Law” to gaming and streaming services. According to it, all telecom operators must install SORM on their networks from July 1, 2018. They are required to store telephone conversations, text messages, images, videos and other communications of users. You need to store conversations and messages for six months, and Internet traffic for 30 days.

The GRFC believes that a set of measures will allow “to ensure proper control against offenders who distribute illegal information using gaming and streaming platforms”, as well as to restrict “minors from harmful content and increase the effectiveness of protecting citizens in the circulation of in-game property and currency” (about the market virtual game items “Kommersant” told on January 28). As Kommersant previously wrote, items from games can also be resold through specialized trading platforms that allow you to withdraw funds.

The idea of ​​introducing into the legal field not only gaming, but also digital assets in general, is already being developed: for example, the Center for Strategic Research has proposed a number of initiatives (see Kommersant of November 7).

The organization proposes to allow the inclusion of such assets, for example, in the composition of the inheritance and bankruptcy estate.

After the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine and the subsequent sanctions, the Russian gaming services market has changed. American Twitch suspended payments to streamers from Russia back in March. They began to switch to alternatives, for example, Trovo from the Chinese Tencent and Russian sites: the traffic of the latter increased by 30% from March to August, and the average remuneration to the author from the viewer increased by 24% year-on-year (see “Kommersant” dated September 21 ). Among the major domestic sites are WASD from MTS and VK Play Live. These companies declined to comment.

A Kommersant source in the market says that he is not yet aware of specific measures to regulate gaming platforms like ARI, but “the issue is being discussed at the level of the regulator and the industry.” He adds that the departments are concerned “primarily with the issue of controlling the financial flows of the gaming industry.” An interlocutor in a large Russian IT company looks at the proposals of the GRFC with caution: “Such initiatives are clearly not what the thinned industry is now waiting for. Additional regulation should help, not harm business.” An employee of a large game studio clarifies that storing textual information (for example, data on player correspondence in chats) is not difficult. It is already preserved so that administrators can resolve conflict situations between players, explains the interlocutor of Kommersant. However, he emphasizes, with voice data, “things are much more complicated, because their volume is huge.” The interlocutor of “Kommersant” adds that the players communicate in game messengers and in their free time: “And this is a total of petabytes of data. How to store them? This will require huge investments in infrastructure.”

The bill will primarily hit Russian publishers of online games, and this is not only about the need to purchase equipment for data storage, notes independent expert Vyacheslav Makarov: “Changing the cost, appearance and characteristics of items is one of the main ways for developers to adjust the balance within the game and introduce new mechanics while retaining the old and attracting new audiences.” If you give in-game items legal status, he explains, “any change to their characteristics would be legally risky.”

The main risks that gaming platforms may be afraid of are associated with additional reporting obligations, including to tax authorities, Viktor Rykov, a lawyer for KA Pen & Paper, believes: “Currencies in games can be non-convertible, which always remain inside, but there are also cases when they can be exchanged for real money outside the site. The desire of the state to track these flows is due to a number of factors. On the one hand, there is a need to withhold taxes from activities, on the other hand, the task of countering the laundering of illegal funds and the financing of terrorism.”

Nikita Korolev, Julia Silence