Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Switzerland Passes Violent Games Ban

Posted by Soulskill on from the they're-just-mad-they-suck-at-olympic-hockey dept.

BanjoTed writes with a followup to news from February that the Swiss government was pursuing a ban on violent video games. He writes "Sadly, Switzerland has now passed the law that paves the way for an outright ban on violent video games in the country. The full implications of the ruling will not be known until the government reveals the exact requirements that will be laid down by the new legislation – a decision that has not yet been made. What is certain though is that the Swiss authorities have now obtained the power to introduce any measures they see fit. The likeliest outcome seems to be an outright ban on the production, distribution and sale of any games deemed to be unsuitable – most likely anything with either a PEGI 16+ or PEGI 18+ certificate."

5 of 294 comments (clear)

  1. This is how I imagine... by gad_zuki! · · Score: 5, Funny

    gaming on Futurama's Neutral Planet would be.

    "Banned for not being Neutral enough."

    "I hate these filthy neutrals, Kif! With enemies, you know where they stand, but with neutrals - who knows. It sickens me."

  2. Re:But how does this reflect poorly on America? by ShadowRangerRIT · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You are aware that Switzerland is *more* capitalistic than the rest of Western Europe right? Due to the lack of a common ethnic or linguistic background, they adopted a form of government quite similar to that of the U.S.; federalist in nature, with significant autonomy for the cantons. Their health care is provided by private organizations, and while the base level health care is required to be offered on a non-profit basis, anything above the base level is offered on a for-profit basis similar to our own. It's one of the few countries to allow assisted suicide, which is a personal freedom even the U.S. denies. Troll all you want, but Switzerland is not the country to use as an object lesson.

    --
    $_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
  3. What has gone wrong with the world? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Is it just me or is the entire world going into a period of reduced freedom and increased state control? Every developed nation appears to be banning violent games, porn and free speech in general and they're doing it for no logical reasons. Modern Warfare 2 sold 6.4million copies in the first week in the US and UK alone and yet there weren't 6.4million new mass murders on the streets. This is more than sufficient evidence to prove that violent games don't turn people into killers and yet are moronic, moralist rulers still press on with their attacks on our freedom.

    The one thing that will turn me into a killer is if this continues because I'm growing to hate society more and more by the day. It's been shown many times throughout history that people will only take so much before heads start to roll.

    1. Re:What has gone wrong with the world? by causality · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Is it just me or is the entire world going into a period of reduced freedom and increased state control? Every developed nation appears to be banning violent games, porn and free speech in general and they're doing it for no logical reasons. Modern Warfare 2 sold 6.4million copies in the first week in the US and UK alone and yet there weren't 6.4million new mass murders on the streets. This is more than sufficient evidence to prove that violent games don't turn people into killers and yet are moronic, moralist rulers still press on with their attacks on our freedom.

      I've been wondering for several years now how long this must go on before the average person realizes that it's a concerted effort. Two or three sovereign nations adopting similar restrictions in similar timeframes is a coincidence. Most of the Western world doing so within the same timespan of a few years indicates a common agenda. It has to be at least significant enough to overcome nationalistic pride, "not invented here", and other factors that would tend to make any given nation not want to follow the lead of all the others.

      Only the public education system could produce such large numbers of people who fail to realize or fail to appreciate that a frighteningly small number of people strongly influence, control, and own the major governments and multinational corporations of the world. Historically, small aristocratic elites have never cared about what was in the interests of the average person. Why does anyone suppose they would start caring about that now with video games and the freedom to play the ones of your choice?

      What has already happened among the various states of the US is now happening with nations. US states once had significant differences in terms of social norms and state laws. If one state's restrictions really bothered you, you could move to another state that had different laws. Now they all have the same drinking age, the same smoking age, similar speed limits, the same list of prohibited substances, etc. The same thing is happening to nations.

      The tendency now is to gradually erode the diversity that exists among nations and turn them into uniform carbon copies of each other so you cannot "vote with your feet" for greater freedoms. This is necessary for two reasons. One, a highly visible counterexample might cause people to decide they won't accept arbitrary restrictions ("country X didn't ban Y, and they haven't had problems with it, so why do we ban Y?"). Two, a few nations that remain free countries would have significant economic (and other) advantages when competing with the ones that jump on the state-control bandwagon. This is in fact one reason why the USA became a superpower in the first place.

      Both of those points would serve to undermine the notion that central management of daily life is a necessary function of modern states. That's why so many nations are doing this at once. It's quite obvious to me that it's more than coincidence.

      --
      It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
  4. there won't be ban by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    don't worry, there was no law passed. what passed was a mandate to the gov to create a law. that law needs to be voted on if it comes (and nobody knows what form it will have anyway).

    even in the unlikely event that that law then will be passed by the parlament, we just need 50k signatures to get a public vote on it (in a world with facebook, that will be very easy).

    So no panic, this just just the healthy way a democracy works, everybody has his ideas, and in the end we can vote on them.