Vladimir Putin at his computer

Russia says popular games have ‘hidden inserts’ targeting its youth, and it wants to whip up a ban list

Russia’s quest to remake its videogame business continues. This time, stories Kommersant (opens in new tab), the nation’s authorities has tasked the Prosecutor General’s workplace and numerous ministries with defending Russian youngsters from the “damaging affect” of games. What type of damaging affect? Well, a fee underneath the council of legislators (opens in new tab) wanting into the matter alleges that a bunch of unnamed popular videogames include “hidden inserts” and “methods of spreading info that have an effect on one’s consciousness and unconscious”.

The fee is pitching a new pair of registers of authorized and prohibited games, and a system whereby any recreation releasing in Russia will first have to be checked for “malware and prohibited content material”—and, one assumes, mind-altering subliminal inserts—by one of many nation’s ‘autonomous non-profit organisations’ known as the Competence Centre for Import Substitution within the ICT Sphere (TsKIKT). The head of TsKIKT, Ilya Massukh, is Russia’s former deputy minister for telecommunications, and Kommersant wasn’t ready to get a maintain of him for remark.