Russian government wants to ban CS:GO and Fortnite

As part of a regime in which the Russian government aims to lessen the alleged negative impact of some “violent” video games on young people, the Russian government has its eyebrows crossed to ban CS:GO, Fortnite, and other games.

While this is news that the esports community generally does not support and has not sat well at all, it is quite the opposite in Russia. This news seems to be highly favorable for the general public in this country, above all, for the parents of young people. But unfortunately, so much has been the noise it has caused that many media outlets have echoed the situation, and this will likely come sooner rather than later.

CS:GO, and Fortnite are on Russia’s list of games to be banned

According to reports, the Russian government has determined that different video games have a negative impact on young people, as well as on their behavioral development. They have targeted online multiplayer games that can generate the highest rate of toxicity and violence.

As we have mentioned, those most affected are Fortnite and CS:GO, but this list is likely to be long and include titles such as League of Legends and VALORANT.

The Russian web portal kommersant.ru notes:

“The government apparatus asks the Prosecutor General’s Office and ministries to evaluate ideas to protect children from the “negative” influence of video games. Among them is the creation of a list of approved games, a register of banned ones, and the requirement to pre-install domestic parental control programs on computers sold in the Russian Federation. Most of the ideas were put forward by the profile commission of the council of legislators in the Federal Assembly. Its participants are sure that popular video games contain “methods of influencing the consciousness and subconscious,” as well as malicious programs and illegal content.”

The effect of this whole scenario being created by the Russian government is that they intend to introduce a list of banned games. These games will be blocked by a special program that all computers in the country must have. The blog ends with the following:

“In particular, the commission proposed to create a registry of banned games, force online game developers to enter them “through Russian identification and authentication systems,” and include Russian parental control systems in the list of programs that must be pre-installed on a computer.”

List of games

There is no doubt that this sounds like a utopia or something out of a fiction series. However, this has been confirmed by different Russian media. On the other hand, let’s remember that a similar system is applied in China, where many gamers must use VPN to play their favorite video games. This, with the risk of being detected and suffering legal consequences in their country.

There is no specific list of games, but there is talk of those games that cause aggressiveness and generate learning mechanisms of addiction to games.

The supposed blockers that would be used in Russia work at a high level, but there are different ways for players to avoid them. As we mentioned, with a good VPN, it is possible that gamers can ignore them and continue playing their favorite video games.

Let us hope that all this is a rumor or that it simply does not happen. As we have observed in recent times, the Russian esports scene is leading the world. So, suffering a blockade of this magnitude could be fatal for esports shortly.

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