The Supreme Court’s decision to look into the case of Swarzenegger vs. EMA has brought forth over 200 trade organizations and video game developers to issue statements (or more official measures like amicus briefs) on the case. Now, the world’s largest video game publisher, Activision Blizzard, has issued an official statement on the matter as well. The company claims that the State of California’s attempts at the federal regulation of video game sales are “dangerous, unnecessary, and misguided, and could undermine freedom of speech protections under the First Amendment for the entire nation.”
Furthermore, Activision refers to California’s legal pursuits as “tampering with the nation’s Constitution and wasting taxpayers’ money,” before suggesting other uses of State funds like consumer education.
“Our First Amendment has survived intact for 219 years amid far greater technological, historical and social challenges,” said Activision CEO Bobby Kotick. “The argument that video games present some kind of new ominous threat that requires a wholesale reassessment of one of our nation’s most treasured freedoms and to take that freedom away indiscriminately from an entire group of our population based on nothing but age is beyond absurd.”
“These are the same attacks Americans have witnessed against every previous emerging entertainment medium and genre including books, comics, rock n’ roll, movies, TV and the Internet. In each case, freedom prevailed,” Kotick continued. “We are thrilled to be able to be an important part of this historic effort to protect our Constitution and to ensure that video games remain vibrant form of expression for every gamer in our constituency…[the] Video game industry is a homegrown California economic success story providing thousands of highly paid skilled jobs at the time of economic crisis.”
It would be cool to see a list of all the companies involved in this case and not just a number. You don’t have to write them out, just find a link that has them all. I already have seen the people fighting against this law, but others might want that information.
I for once agree with Kotick (not gonna be a continuing thing), but only so government doesn’t get involved with the sale and rating of games. The Movie industry already has a prudish rating board, and by banning the sale of violent video games (granted to minors), there could be greater censorship on behalf of the government.
As soon as a list is made available, I will definitely feature it. So far, the extent of the 200+ companies has not been made publicly available.
Well I know Joystiq has a huge list of people that are involved, so you could grab that. I know the definitive list probably won’t be reveled until the case is underway. I am just curious as to what other publishers are jumping on the bandwagon.
I mean, Seriously, Swarzenegger wants to ban the sale of violent video games, but that would be a detriment to California in the huge loss in sales taxes, also not to mention that quite a lot of developers in California produce M rated games, so that would hurt the viability of their business.