Video game downloads are frequently in the news for all the wrong reasons, with politicians blaming them for encouraging violence, promoting antisocial behavior, and even causing school shootings. As a result, several countries have tried to introduce laws that restrict how and when people can play video games.
People always Find a Way to Play Games they want
We’ve seen that many of the games that politicians have tried to ban are extremely popular. People who really want to play them will always find a way — often through illegal means.
If certain games suddenly become illegal to buy or play, the people who want to play them will find a way to do it. The only difference is that video games are digital, so people can play them online on servers located in different countries. This creates extra layer of difficulty for a government to stop people from playing what they want — even if it means breaking the law.
Video Games are Too Big of a Business to be Banned
The global video games industry is worth around $100 billion a year. In fact, in the US alone, it employs more than a million people, many of whom earn a living wage.
A lot of these people are employed in the fields of game development, publishing, and marketing.
If video games were suddenly banned, it would cost the economy billions of dollars and cost many people their jobs. In fact, we’ve seen that these types of bans often lead to the rise of an illegal black market, which is controlled by criminals who don’t care about the law.
Politicians and law enforcement find it very hard to shut down black markets, as they operate out of sight from the authorities and are hard to track down.
Banning Video Games would be Impossible to Enforce
Even if a government managed to ban a video game, how would they enforce it? There’s no way to know how many copies of a game were sold or downloaded illegally, or how many people playing a game online are in a country that has banned it.