The Public Chamber of the Russian Federation proposed to equate large playgrounds with audiovisual services. In this case, services like Steam, Origin and PS Store will be required to comply with the requirements of the law on “landing”.Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus
This was reported on February 8 by the TASS news agency with reference to the statement of the head of the working group of the Russian Federation on the protection of the rights of Internet users Alexander Malkevich.
According to him, Steam, PlayStation, Xbox and other services spread information to a large audience: “Then how do they differ from the conditional Netflix? Such services show films and TV series, and playgrounds also distribute audio and video information.”
The need to “land” playgrounds is also explained by their similarity to social networks. Users can not only buy and play games, but also communicate with each other in chat rooms.
Malkevich also believes that some of the content on such platforms should be regulated due to unacceptable content. As an example, he cited the appeal of a certain woman who noticed her son “playing a frankly obscene computer game” on Steam. According to Malkevich, this project “is propaganda of Nazism and has an obvious pornographic character.” However, he did not specify which title he was talking about.
Thus, the head of the OP working group on protecting the rights of Internet users wants gaming services that provide services to Russian users to comply with Russian legislation. First of all, we are talking about the law on “landing” adopted last year.
Recall that it obliges foreign Internet companies with a daily audience of 500 thousand users to open their representative offices on the territory of the Russian Federation. Roskomnadzor has already stated that Google, Meta, Apple, Twitter, TikTok, Telegram and others should open such branches.