The Russian government apparatus asked ministries and departments to evaluate ideas for protecting children from the “negative” influence of video games. Kommersant writes about this with reference to a letter from the director of the government’s information technology department, sent, in particular, to the Prosecutor General’s Office, the Ministry of Digital Development and the Ministry of Education.
Most of the ideas discussed in the letter were put forward by the commission on information policy. Among them is to create lists of approved and prohibited games, to provide access to games “through Russian systems of identification and authentication”, and also to pre-install domestic parental control programs on computers sold in Russia.
The commission believes that popular video games (their names are not given) use “hidden inserts” and “methods of information dissemination that affect the consciousness and subconsciousness.” The government, on the recommendation of the commission, should consider the idea of checking video game code for “malicious programs and prohibited content.”
If the banned video game registry initiative takes the form of a law, and sanctions include criminal prosecution, the official distribution of such games will stop, Kirill Lyakhmanov, chief legal adviser of the intellectual property practice at EBR law firm, notes: “This will most likely not affect the accessibility of such games: if If they can’t be purchased officially, then you’ll probably be able to download them from a torrent.”
Russian authorities regularly propose new restrictions regarding video games. For example, in 2021 Roskomnadzor offered using artificial intelligence to check games for scenarios with child pornography, calls for suicide or drug use.
In addition, at the end of 2022, Kommersant informed about the government’s plans to introduce mandatory age marking of video games, and the Ministry of Economic Development acted with the idea to ban the sale of games with “content that violates the law.”