Regulatory, ethical and legal requirements applicable to the Games, animation and VFX industries

Cyber Security

What is Cyber Security?
Cyber security is the protection of systems, networks and data from unauthorised access that could lead to financial damage, exploitations or theft.

What is Hacking?
Hacking is an unauthorised intrusion into someone's computer, system or network. The person engaged in this illegal activity is a skilled computer expert that uses their technical and programming knowledge to break the computer's security for stealing/modifying data.


Examples of hacking in the games, animation or VFX industries

- Blizzard Entertainment, an American company and video game developer, got hacked twice in August 2016. They announced via their social media that their servers were under a DDoS ( Distributed Denial of Service) attack which led games such as World of  Warcraft or Hearthstone to be unavailable to play.

- Minecraft, a sandbox video game was hacked by a group called "OurMine", famous for breaching into social media accounts of Facebook or Google, exposed vulnerabilities of internet cookies and how hackers can take advantage of this mistake. They did this to raise awareness about today's cyber security problems.


What is Phishing?
Phishing is an activity that has a goal of obtaining personal information, such a credit card details, account passwords, etc to steal money through email, phone calls or websites.


Examples of phishing in the games, animation or VFX industries

- Unreal Tournament and Epic Games developer has warned their users to not click any links from an email that pretended to be from the studio because they were experiencing a phishing attack.



Censorship

What is Censorship?

Censorship is the prevention of speech or content that is considered offensive, destructive and  sensitive.

Video games` censorship limits the access, suppress content to protect under-aged people from graphic and violent content or avoid ethnic stereotyping/offense, etc.

A lot of video games have certain parts of their content removed or edited due to the requirements of the regional rating standards. For example a well known game called World of Warcraft, in the European version a quest that required the player to get their character drunk in order to obtain a "Wolpertinger pet" was removed. Also in the Chinese version blood was edited to be black instead of red and all the objects that looked to be made out of bone were removed or replaced ( e.g. skeletons were removed, sand bags were placed instead of bone piles, etc).



Child protection on the internet

The internet is a great source of information and it also allows children to play games and be creative, however young people should be protected from the risks that they may encounter while being online. 

Risks of online games:

- Games may have inappropriate or damaging content (e.g. violent material). It is important that children do not play games that are not appropriate for their age.

- Games can become quite addictive for some people

- Some players may try to steal or hack children`s accounts for their virtual possessions (e.g. in-game currency, rare items, etc)

- People of all ages are playing games and this means that some of them may take advantage of the fact that nobody knows how old persons online really are, they may have intentions of grooming children by building emotional connections with them.

Parental controls were built to block harmful/sensitive/violent content and they can be installed on any devices (phones, game consoles, computers/laptops and tablets). Using these controls, parents/guardians can stop children from entering dangerous websites, downloading applications that are inappropriate for their age and control for how long young people can stay online.



Age ratings


PEGI ( Pan European Game Information) is the European rating system that labels the entertainment content for the age group that it is suitable for. These ratings give users the information they need in order to buy games appropriate for their age.





PEGI 3:
- Games with this label are recognised as suited for all age groups.
- Violence is accepted only in a comical or child friendly context ( for example Tom and Jerry cartoon-like violence).
- Nudity is also accepted, but only if it is shown in a natural and non-sexual way such as breast feeding.
- There aren't any inappropriate images or sounds that would scare children.
- Only appropriate language is used.
- Only fantasy characters are used. (Children should not be able to associate the characters shown on screen with real life figures).

PEGI 7:
- Similar with PEGI 3, but may contain some frightening scenes or sounds that are acceptable.

PEGI 12:
-  Allows more graphic and authentic looking violence against fantasy characters.
- Violence towards human-like characters should look unrealistic.
- Slightly more graphic nudity is allowed at this level of rating.
- Inappropriate language is allowed only is it is mild and does not contain sexual expletives.
- May feature appropriate horror content.

PEGI 16:
- This rating shows more mature content.
- Allows realistic violence towards human characters.
- Sexual activity is allowed only if it does not include visible genitals.
- Inappropriate language and sexual expletives are also allowed.
- The game can feature the use of tobacco, alcohol and illegal drugs.
- The game could glamorise crime.

PEGI 18:
- The grade of violence is more extreme and gross (e.g. torture).
- Games with this rating may show violence against vulnerable (e.g. children/elder people) or innocent characters.
- Sexual activity with visible genitals is allowed.
- May feature glamorised crime and illegal drugs.



At the back of the package, content labels/descriptors can be found to explain why the game received the rating. The photo above shows the existing eight descriptors: bad language, discrimination, drugs, fear, gambling, sex, violence, online.







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