EU to video game industry: Come up with a code of conduct for protecting minors

What would you do to protect minors from violent images? For the European Union, that would mean coaxing the video game industry to come up with a widely-accepted code of conduct for that very purpose. The EU has set a deadline for that, too. More politics follows after the jump.

Two years: That’s all the time that the European Union (EU) has given to video game makers and shops to come up with a widely accepted code of conduct for the industry.

The reason? To protect minors from violent images in today’s video games. Apparently, the European Union public is still very much concerned that video games can cause aggressive behavior in children.

School shootings in recent months have only succeeded in heightening fears regarding the matter. While the EU executive body has powers to propose legislation, it has decided to give the video game industry a two-year grace period to get things done, instead.

On top of that, the EU has asked the industry to spend more on advertising its symbols denoting the age of suitability of video games, such as via the Pan European Games Information system (PEGI)

While the European Commission accepts that there is no conclusive evidence that violent video games do influence children’s behavior, it nonetheless wants to “work in this environment as a precautionary principle.”

Via Reuters