In April, the US Supreme Court had agreed to review a motion prohibiting the sale or rental of violent video games to minors. The law if passed is set to allow states to impose sales restrictions on violent titles — effectively declaring them to be on the same level as pornography and therefore able to legally limit their sale to adults.
The Supreme Court is reviewing a federal court’s ruling, which had declared the law unconstitutional. Industry leaders are now sweating over the prospect of having to deal with something like this and are assessing the possible implications.
Strauss Zelnick, CEO of Take Two Interactive said,
It’s very, very surprising that the Supreme Court is hearing the case,” Strauss Zelnick, CEO of Rockstar parent Take Two told CNBC. I’m worried about it, and I think everybody in our business should be really worried about it.
The main concern is the fact that each state would push through their own version of the bill and developers might have to sell different versions of the game in separate states.
John Riccitiello, CEO of EA,
One of America’s great exports is entertainment. 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.”
via CNBC