Blog Archives
Steam Pulls and Restores Controversial Game Hatred from Greenlight
The controversial isometric shooter about a serial killer, Hatred, made it to Steam Greenlight but it didn’t last long there. After only a few hours on Greenlight, Hatred had ascended to #7 on the Steam Greenlight chart but that was as high as it would go. Valve quickly removed the game from Greenlight and indicated that Hatred would not be making its game onto Steam.
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Russia Gives The Sims 4 an Adults Only Rating
Citing the controversial so-called “Protection of Children” law, the video games rating board in Russia has classified The Sims 4 as “prohibited for children” ahead of its upcoming release in the second half of 2014.
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Guise of the Wolf Dev Censors TotalBiscuit’s Criticism, Tries to Shut Him Down
Back in October, popular YouTube personality John Bain, AKA TotalBiscuit, was embroiled in a brief brouhaha with the developers of a poorly received indie game called Day One: Garry’s Incident. The devs of that game, Wild Games Studio, filed a copyright claim against TB’s video to get it pulled down and it hit the fan. News spread quickly about what happened in a classic case of the Streisand Effect and the game and studio were shown in a bad light as a result.
It seems as though people forget things quickly because TotalBiscuit is in a similar kerfuffle with the developers of another game. Guise of the Wolf is another poorly received indie game, this time by FUN Creators. They also used a DMCA claim to remove TB’s video and had the story blow up to Streisandian proportions.
The funny thing is that FUN Creators didn’t stop at the DMCA claim and strike on the YouTube channel. When TB fought back, things got really weird.
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The UK’s Porn Filter Blocks League of Legends Patch
I think we all knew that the United Kingdom’s so-called porn filter would end up causing more harm than good but I don’t think that gamers thought it would hit so close to home. League of Legends gamers have been experiencing errors after a recent update that included files with names that triggered the filters.
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Day One: Garry’s Incident Devs Censoring TotalBiscuit’s Criticism
As has been well established, I’m not a big fan of censorship. I’m not a fan of the press trying to censor developers and I’m even less of a fan of developers trying to censor the press.
The developers of indie game Day One: Garry’s Incident have done the latter and opened themselves up to the Streisand Effect. Developer Wild Games Studio filed a copyright claim under the DMCA on a critical impressions video by popular YouTube personality TotalBiscuit and it’s all hit the fan.
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Video Game Violence, Ratings and Your Children
It’s just one of those things that we gamers have come to expect. Any time that video games are even tangentially related to a violent crime, the mainstream media will jump on that as a reason for the commission of that crime, regardless of the numerous studies that show no causative relationship between video game violence and real violence.
The latest case of the persecution of video games and gamers comes from Louisiana where an 8-year-old boy shot his grandmother in the head. The East Feliciana Parish Sheriff’s Department have strongly implied that the boy playing Grand Theft Auto IV led to the shooting.
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Games Criticism, Censorship and Artistic Integrity
Did I miss the memo? I’m convinced that there is a missive sent out to video games writers with talking points that we’re all supposed to stick to for a year.
Last year, it was that the vision of a developer should never be questioned. Look at the uproar over Mass Effect 3’s ending. Despite the plot holes and inconsistencies in the ending sequence, many members of the media defended BioWare by saying that this was BioWare’s vision and it shouldn’t be compromised because we shouldn’t compromise the developer’s “artistic integrity.”
This year, artistic integrity is no longer an applicable concept when talking about the contents of a game. Now, if a writer feels that the majority of people should be offended by something, it should be changed. In twelve months, we’ve gone from a developer having unassailable artistic integrity to a press corps getting dangerously close to censorship.
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Vietnam to Censor Online Current Affairs Discussion
The Vietnamese government has come under fire this week for Decree 72 which is otherwise known as “Management, Provision, Use of Internet Services and Information Content Online”. This new Vietnamese law, coming into effect on September 1st, will effectively ban people from engaging online discussion about current events, with an emphasis involving Vietnam’s current affairs.
At its heart, the decree will outlaw citizens from posting anything that “harms national security and opposes the state.”
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Russia to Ban Swearing on the Internet
While Russia is busy waging their war against gays and those who support them, they’re engaging in a mission to single-handedly fix the internet that’s so ridiculous that is makes Aaron Sorkin’s internet writing on The Newsroom seem Emmy worthy.*
Russia is planning to clean up the internet by requiring all web pages with profane language be blocked from access in Russia within 24 hours of the profane language being posted. See, told you Will McAvoy wasn’t this crazy with his mission to civilize.
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Britain to Block Online Pornography
While the rest of Britain and the world are focusing on the birth of the Royal Baby, British Prime Minister David Cameron has made a major announcement that might get buried under baby watch. By the end of this year, the United Kingdom will require internet service providers to block online pornography unless users specifically request that they be allowed to access porn.
et geekera 