Legal Issues within Video games

Piracy, has become a huge threat to the video games industry. Piracy is when an unauthorised copy of a peice of software has been made. This means that users can often get brand new software for FREE upon release.

 

This poses as a strong threat to the industry as the industry gains no money yet people still have access to the game/software.

 

Piracy is at its strongest on the PC, as no hacking is required like on consoles. Just simply use  a bittorrent client and find a torrent website and voila you're a pirate. its really that simple.

 

Ways companys try to stop piracy...

SecurRom - Means the original CD has to be in the drive before the game starts
Activation codes - An activation code has to be inputted in order to start installation
DRM - The game checks online for cracks/bypasses. if it finds any differences the game will not start.


Ways hackers&cracking teams Overcome security.

Securom - Reverse engineer executable and send a replacement without Securom.
Activation codes - Key Generater.
DRM -  Reverse engineer executable and send a replacement without DRM.

 

Ethics Within Video Games

Over time, the game industry has been evolving to meet the demands of an ever changing market.

During the beginning of the development  stages, and in many ways, the sensetive topic of Ethics should not be left ignored or untouched as it is critically important to the success of the game as if Ethics are not considered, the reputation of the company is at stake along with a loss in sales and potentially the game being banned in some countries.


Where It All Began...

                                                          By todays standards this is merely a laughing stock.
                                                          But back in the day it was a whole different story.



Ethical problems in video games date back to 1976 in the form of the game "Death Race" in which the player would run over pedestrians to score points, which got the game banned in the early 1980s for being unethical.
It was games like this in the following decade that decreased the sales of the NES meaning that nintendo had to release their "Seal Of Approval" to show the games were appropriate and Ethically correct and sales slowly regenerated.





Ethical Issues In Games Today.


Since the Late 70s. anyone would expect that by now the industry would have learned about ethical issues within the games they release and tried to avoid them...but no they haven't and its time to bring up the case of Resident Evil 5. 

Before even the release of the game, Resident Evil 5 was deemed racist as its trailer consisted of a white american protaganist slaying wave after wave of  african villagers. However, in the end, the game was deemed "not racist". The released game, appeared to be more racially diverse, but capcom deny this saying that "the game was already designed this way".

What are regulatory bodies? 

 A government agent, agency or commission that has the authority to tell a business what it may or may not do, so on the subject of gaming, the PEGI and BBFC.

 

 

The two regulatory bodies in the UK are the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification), who classify 10% of all games released into the UK, and PEGI (Pan-European Game Information) who cater for the other 90%.

What is the difference between BBFC and PEGI?

BBFC

The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), originally British Board of Film Censors, is a non-governmental organisation, funded by the film industry and responsible for the  classification and censorship of films, dvds & games within the United Kingdom.

PEGI

PEGI, as opposed to BBFC aim to protect the industry  itself, so they regulate their own products. The classifications are not enforced by law, but if the game is innapropriate e.g sexual scenes drug use etc, the game is exempt by law and is forced to be regulated by BBFC

Sources: WikiAnswers,Wikipedia