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How the Supreme Court Case Could Stifle Free-to-Play Online Gaming
In November the Supreme Court is getting ready to rule on Schwarzenegger vs. EMA, the California law banning the sale of "violent" video games to minors. Although the focus of the law is at brick-and-mortar retailers selling boxed copies of games, some believe that it could have ruinous effects elsewhere.
Gene Hoffman, chairman and CEO of Vindicia (an online billing company for publishers like Activision/Blizzard) believes that the free-to-play MMO model (where you play for free but unlock extra content for the game via money) could be particularly threatened by this law if the Supreme Court rules that it's constitutional. Although it's meant to go after physical retail stores who sell boxed versions of violent video games to minors, Hoffman says it's written broadly enough that it could apply to the online space as well. This could have bad consequences for a sector of gaming that's always trying to find and keep its players.
"...the freemium model requires unfettered initial access to the game by millions. The only sure way to prevent minors from accessing forbidden games online is to require a credit card validation up front. But that’s also a big deterrent for many adults: Virtually no one who uses the Internet believes that giving a card number to a game maker would not eventually result in a charge to that card. Destroying the frictionless access that adults have to free-to-play games that might be considered violent would drastically decrease innovation in the online games world, as the base of potential users would no longer be large enough to convince developers to take the risk on new games."
While we'd hope that some of these freemium online game companies would find new ways to entice gamers other than requiring a credit card as a makeshift age gate, Hoffman also brings up this law's short-sightedness. With innovations such as cloud computing on the horizon, the question of managing access to media content is only going to get more complex.
via GamePolitics
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