Games in the dissatisfied – Newspaper Kommersant No. 199 (7400) of 10/26/2022

Attempts to regulate gaming content appeared as early as 1993 in the United States. The U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary held hearings in connection with the release of “Night Trap”, which contained scenes of violence against women. The first gaming-related lawsuit was filed in 1997 by Florida lawyer Jack Thompson representing the parents of children killed in a school shooting. The lawyer asked the court to ban the distribution of a number of games and the film “The Basketball Diaries”, which, in his opinion, led to the shooting. The court rejected the claims. The first bill to ban “harmful” video games appeared in the US in 2000. It concerned the use of slot machines by minors without parental supervision, but never entered into force.

In Russia, foreign games have repeatedly caused dissatisfaction with the authorities. In January 2010, State Duma deputy from the Liberal Democratic Party Valery Seleznev proposed that the game “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2” by the American Activision be included in the list of extremist games because of the story mission “Not a word in Russian”, in which the main character becomes an accomplice in the execution of visitors to the Moscow airport. The publisher removed the mission from the Russian version of the game.

There were also questions about the presentation of historical events in the games. In September 2013, blogger Bad Comedian (Evgeny Bazhenov) published a review of the Canadian Relic’s WW2 strategy Company of Heroes 2. Questions from the blogger were caused, among other things, by story missions in the Soviet campaign. Users published petitions demanding to ban the distribution of the game in the Russian Federation. The distributor “1C-SoftClub” has suspended sales of copies of the game in the country.