In late April, the Supreme Court decided to review the controversial Californian legislation that would place heavy fines and restrictions on the sale of violent video games to minors. The law was found unconstitutional in a lower court ruling, but that ruling was later appealed by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Jerry Brown. The outcome of the review will determine if individual states can impose sales restrictions on games with a mature rating, treating them not unlike X-rated entertainment. CNBC spoke with a number of prominent figures in the industry about the review.
“It’s very, very surprising that the Supreme Court is hearing the case,” Take-Two chairman Strauss Zelnick told the news network. “I’m worried about it, and I think everybody in our business should be really worried about it.”
If the law is put in place, violent M-rated games could lose their biggest distributors as certain retail chains, such as Wal-Mart, choose not to carry adult-only titles. “It’s not about having a dramatic impact on our bottom line,” says Graham Hopper, Disney Interactive Studios Executive Vice President. “It’s going to make our retailing abilities a nightmare.”
EA’s John Riccitiello fears developers and publishers having to create multiple versions of a title for different North American markets. “One of America’s great exports is entertainment,” said Riccitiello. “The implication of Schwarzenegger v. ESA (the case before the Court) is we could end up with state level bureaucracies that define what’s marketable in 50 different jurisdictions across the U.S. I can imagine [the government] trying to tell Steven Spielberg ‘We need 50 different cuts of your movie for each state.’ It will screw us up in a real way.”
Ultimately, the Supreme Court is reviewing the legislation in the hopes of finally putting a nail in the issue. Most of the industry stands together behind the original ruling: that the restrictions would be a violation of First Amendment rights.
“We believe as an industry that the primary reason the Supreme Court is hearing it is despite the fact that this law has been struck down, [the issue] has come up 12 times [previously],” says Jack Tretton, CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment of America. “I think the Supreme Court is looking at it to potentially see if there’s something to it or to put an end to it once and for all.”
1 Comments
July 10, 2010
I have commented on these issues in many other blogging opportunities. Starting with the First Amendment, there is no justification for politicians to have their immoral dirty hands on such legislation. Nor do such deadbeats as occupy our legislatures, both state and federal, have any de facto justification, e.g. research, for legislating the status of games. Ignorance is bliss in the world of politics, and votes, at the expense of manipulating the unsuspecting population is the order of the day.