The U.S. Supreme Court confirms video games are protected speech.
Following accusations that playing video games might lead to real world violence, the Entertainment Software Association led legal efforts to protect free speech in games. In Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association & Entertainment Software Association, the U.S. Supreme Court confirmed that video games are to be afforded the same type of First Amendment protection as any other type of artistic expression. The Court emphasized:
Like the protected books, plays, and movies that preceded them, video games communicate ideas—and even social messages—through many familiar literary devices (such as characters, dialogue, plot, and music) and through features distinctive to the medium (such as the player’s interaction with the virtual world). That suffices to confer First Amendment protection.
The video game industry empowers parents with tools to protect children.
The video game industry recognizes the importance of providing information and tools for all audiences to make educated, age-appropriate purchasing decisions regarding video games.
For 30 years, the industry has worked through the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) to ensure that consumers—especially parents and caregivers—have the resources, including voluntary ratings and content descriptors, needed to make informed decisions about video games. The effectiveness of these efforts has been praised by the U.S. Supreme Court and U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
According to a 2013 study, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) found that ESRB has the highest in-store ratings enforcement among all entertainment industries (including film, home video and music).
The ESRB provides a centralized place for parents to obtain step-by-step parental control guides for all the game consoles, Windows computers and other platforms at ParentalTools.org.
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Essential Facts About Video Games and Court Rulings
Courts, including the US Supreme Court, have ruled 13 times that computer and video games are protected speech. Efforts by these legislative bodies to ban or limit access to or the sale of games they find objectionable will inevitably run afoul of the First Amendment of the US Constitution.
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