Government to tax violent video games

Once again, the US Government is planning on taxing violent video games, and obviously hoping to make developers shut down. Anyone think this might actually happen, or will it be shot down like all the other attempts? It's been scientifically proven numerous times already that violent games don't make people violent, or motivate people to commit murder, or crime in general. Is that not good enough? FYI this only applies to the violent games. Non violent games, like the sports games, would not be affected. http://washingtonexaminer.com/gop-tax-plan-singles-out-violent-video-game-makers/article/2544733

Shot down.

Think Sonic Cycle, but with videogame government bills. Someone will come up "Videogames ruining our kids" which sure some merit, but otherwise overblown like any other media, goes to court, doesn't pass through, life moves on.

It might. I think it's tied into 1 big tax bill that's got a whole bunch of crap. Remember the Affordable Health Care Act? 2000+ pages that no politician read but still managed to vote for it? No politician is going to read this shit.

Who the hell is getting elected to do this in the US?

The people getting elected aren't the real problem. It's the uninformed poorly educated masses who ultimately decide our leadership.

Either way, it's scary

sad part is it'll only get worse, much worse.. real freedom hasn't existed in the US for about 20 years now and soon it'll be run by a dictatorship.

The law is already unconstitutional. The Supreme Court already ruled three years ago that video games fall under First Amendment protection.

Actually the Government isn't trying to tax games, what they are doing is just remove them from the pool who can get a tax credit, the tax is already and have been there for a long time.

But since the supreme court has already decided that games are to be considered art and therefore under the freedom of speech protection, this move will most likely be seen as state censorship and tossed out if it ever becomes something more then a conservative idea.

"Scientifically proven numerous times...." Care to share this research? I did my dissertation which include video game violence and there are many papers which point towards violence in games can cause a priming of aggression in people. There are some grey areas with games such as Mario where you jump on peoples heads to "kill" something which do little to prime aggression, so its more of a visual priming of violent imagery such as weapons, blood and acts of violence that can cause people to show increased levels of aggression.

There is no evidence to prove let along seriously suggest that playing GTA and murdering people will make you a murderer. However playing those games, being exposed to them and inflicting the actions of murdering & mutilating game characters does have a real effect on people.

There is a horrible amount of ignorance and over defensive play by the majority of both sides of the argument.

My argument to anyone would be. If a game is so separate to how you act in real life, if you were to see someone playing a game that involved the raping of children in the most disgusting way possible, would you allow for the fact that is it is "a game" so it is OK, or would you say that the person playing is allowing the actions of something so disgusting to happen has some reflection upon their personality and mental well being. Personally I would think that there was something wrong with someone wanting to do that.

I know there are some...many blurred lines and areas of grey on the subject and it really deserves a large open debate, but I feel that the simple marking of the subject as either "it does" or "it doesn't" is not correct and damaging.

They aren't talking about extra tax for violent video games, they're talking about tax relief for games that are developed locally and aren't violent to try encourage development while being popular enough with the public that it passes (it is public money they're talking about using after all).

If anything I'd be more wondering why a booming private industry like US game development needs any sort of public tax relief but either way the folks moaning about this as if it's some sort of extra tax on violent video games to try take away their Gears of War games are just as bad as the "video game violence is bad" clowns.

It's not run by politicians. It's run by corperations and the 1%

Actually it's more like people don't really care, out of all the people I've known or worked with, none of them have actually voted or have constantly been a voter. I don't ever plan on to tell we actually have someone worth voting for cause the last 16 years it's always been who's "the lesser piece of crap"

I will be honest i was cheering for Obama in 08 here from europe. But after seing what he's accomplished, i have to agree with that

video games are violent but movies arent?