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Video Games Seen becoming a new Frontier in Digital Rights

Article content By Avi Asher-Schapiro



NEW YORK, July 30 (Thomson the Reuters Foundation) - Digital rights battles that are crucial to privacy as well as free speech and anonymity are increasingly being fought in video games, a booming market that is now becoming a "new political arena," experts and insiders said on Thursday.



Video games are emerging as a brand new frontier in digital rights.



Participants at RightsCon an event on digital rights, noted that the industry is expected to double its annual revenues to $300 billion by 2025. This makes it more urgent to inquire about what designers, operators and government agencies deal with sensitive issues.



Article content



Article content In the last few months, an Hong Kong activist staged a protest against Beijing's rule within a well-known social simulator game called Animal Crossing, and a member of the U.S. Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was a participant in the game as well.



The game Minecraft, meanwhile, has been used to circumvent censorship with groups using it to create digital libraries and to transport banned materials into oppressive countries.



Micaela Mantegna, founder of GeekyLegal (an Argentinian group that is focused on technology policy), stated, "Video games are now this new political arena."



Also, game designers have been dealing with sensitive topics by designing games that address issues such as mental illness or refugees.



"Video games are a great method to begin conversations about topics that are difficult to engage in real life," said Stephanie Zucarelli who is a board member for Women in Games Argentina, an organization that is not for profit.



Content of the article User rights could be violated According to Kurt Opsah (an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation), an organization that protects digital rights.



Law enforcement agencies can request from game companies to provide their personal information about users operating companies are able to censor game users and governments can press game makers and operators to remove content, he added.



He provided an example of the U.S. military deleting critical remarks that were posted on recruitment channels hosted on Twitch the most popular streaming platform.



He added, "They didn’t want people to be anti-military on their recruiting channels."



He added that governments could apply pressure to videogame companies. This is evident in the case of Activision Blizzard Entertainment, which this year banned the player from a tournament because of political remarks about Hong Kong in an interview.
All about minecraft servers and minecraft in general


Tencent Holdings, a Chinese gaming giant, has a stake in Blizzard.



(Reporting by Avi Asher-Schapiro. Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable part of Thomson Reuters, that covers the lives of people around the world who strive to live freely or fairly. Visit http://news.trust.org)


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