Finnish Christian Democrats wants to censor, examine videogames

Every country has their own opinion as far as ratings go. In the US we have the ESRB rating system and in Finland they have the PEGI (Pan European Game Information) classification.

Recently the Finnish Christian Democratic Party demanded censorship of video games which was not previously included in their laws.

PEGI, a collaboration between game studios, child welfare and other organizations, wants to divide games into five categories to prevent possible violence and erotic content of video games from getting into the hands of Finnish children. With all the hype about game content flooding the news, they deemed it necessary to inspect and censor videogames coming into their country.

But the Finnish Games and Multimedia Association (FIGMA) claims that inspection procedures are already in place despite the law stating it was not required to inspect incoming shipment of video games. it warned PEGI that performing another examination of the games would only result in delaying release schedules, increasing the price of the games and cause merchants to lose customers as they would find reason to buy their games outside of Finland.

The new classifications PEGI wants to use to divide games into age categories are 3+, 7+, 12+, 16+ and 18+. It also requests that each game submitted by companies include a form filed by game studios prior to the game inspection. Reviews will be provided by either the Netherlands Institute for the Classification of Audio-visual Media (NICAM) or the Finnish Board of Film Classification (VET).

Read [After Dawn] Read [Terra Nova Blogs]