- Tuesday, 10 November 2009
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The corporate grip on opinion in the US is one of the wonders of the Western world - Gore Vidal
Brazil bans Counter-Strike and Everquest
GEEKS throughout Brazil are expected to flee the country after its nanny state government decided that their favourite games Counter-Strike and Everquest should be banned because they are too violent.
The popular role-playing games were accused of inciting violence and were "harmful to consumers' health". It should be pointed out that while the government says that cigarettes are harmful to Brazilian health, it has never attempted to ban them.
Both games have been on the streets in one form or another since 1999 and are popular amongst the tech community.
According to AP, the federal prohibition on the sale of the games was being applied across the country.
The ban was ordered in October 2007 by a Brazilian federal court Judge, Carlos Alberto Simoes reckoned the games, encouraged "the subversion of public order, were an attack against the democratic state and the law and against public security." At the time most people thought he was joking.
It seems that the judge listened to psychologists who told him that the games are more addictive than drugs. Since stopping people from playing Counter-strike is a lot easier than dealing with Brazil's drugs problems, the Brazilian law enforcement seems to have decided to try for a battle it thinks it can win.
What the Brazilian authorities do not understand is there is a little thing called the Internet and Judge Simoes has just made it more likely to be illegally downloaded.
There is no indication if the government is going to try to expand the ban to other titles. Anyone who can find things subversive about Everquest is going to have a lot of trouble with anything short of a Wii-sport package.
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This history is still far from over. It's not the first time the Brazillian governament bans a game, Doom, Carmageddon, Requiem and if I'm not mistaken, Quake are all banned in the country. Since none of those game had any comercial importance in the country when they were banned, people basically ignored the bans. 

Counter-Strike is another story though.. It's by far the most popular game played on Lan houses and over the internet in Brazil, and banning the game is certainly going to force the lan houses to go up against the decision. EA Brasil (ea handles distribution for valve games' in Brazil) is just waiting for official notification on the ban to decide what step to take and there already is talk about a major lan house fanchise planning some legal action as well.

What amuses me is how they completely ignore those stupid reality shows that feature everything from drugs to pr0n and airs on TV every day but have the "goodwill" to protect the society from "violent games" which they don't even understand.

Pathetic.
Given that non-pirated copies of Windows are the exception rather than the rule in Brazil, and there are laws about who can get guns, and yet the traficantes in Rio are better armed than Al Quaeda, banning Counterstrike in Brazil is about as smart as trying to prevent flooding with paper towels. 
Presumably if gamers can't get their virtual hardware in Counterstrike they'll just go out and buy the real thing in the favelas of Rio.
Given the record of the black-market success of the ultra-violent Brazilian film "tropa de elite" before it was released to cinemas, I don't know how this judge thought he could restrict violent material, or any material for that matter.
Deforestation of the Amazon is illegal too...
This is really really stupid. Brazil's favellas are among the most dangerous places of the world. People get killed over there everyday, for no particular reason or sometimes to steal their organs. You can get your hands on drugs just as easily as on sugar, and those people probably never even saw a video game.
Funny, I dont remember any of the gangs using magic in City of God!
Carlos Simoes is just stupid. Maybe he never heard about Steam either. He's powerless and probably thinks he can ban a game, this is just ridiculous. He also made a rule prohibiting anyone below 18 years old to use a lan house. Most lan houses shutdown because of it, when inspectors showed up they always asked for bribe. Now, did it work properly? No, it didn't. I repeat, Carlos Simoes is stupid.

Btw, steal organs? I think you're watching "Tourists" too much. They kidnap people, they kill people for using their drugs and not paying, they kill to steal your goodies and so on, but I don't think they steal organs. They are dumb, while stil a kid, they start working on the drugs dealing only telling the others if police is coming, they get around 350 USD per week for doing that. Then they go climbing on the hierarchy. The main problem is that jailers are also corrupt, even when the leaders are arrested, they still command the drug dealing from inside the jail.

And some idiot is prohibiting a game...
I think this country really needs someone with the balls to do something actually useful. To hell with Simoes.
Just my 2 cents.
I cant disagree more with the RIDICULOUS comment made by Alexko. Have you ever been in Brazil? There is like one major CITY with favelas as you say, and is the city of Rio de Janeiro, and that is not Brazil's capital as you may think. People there do not steal you organs, and in my opinion you are reading too much urban legend books. 
Small Town Minds people think that way. 
As for the fact that Brazil has another things to worry instead of Games, hell yes, I cant agree more with you.
Regards!
Sorry, but I needed to get this straight. Yes, the murder rate at the favellas is crazy high. But there is a very specific reason for that: drug traffic. The dealers are always on war with each other and the police, and this is the only reason for murder. THE IS NO SUCH THING AS ORGANS STEALING. On the street, the chance you have to get murdered is just as high as on New York, London and so on...
Now, the ban is ridiculous, but I have no doubt that the jugde will change his mind soon.
I am brazilian and the article was good until i read Alexko comment, ridiculous is your comment. Favellas are very dangerous, but no one ever heard or ever noticed a case about stealling organs you saw the horrible film Turistas and thinks that this happen for real... poor guy. So after the film Hostel, everyone in the old soviet republics like to get foreigners to kill then only for pleasure.

And in the final, Counter Strike is the game most played, everyone has PS2 (the most popular console here) and in every favella has lan houses.

So if you dont know the facts... shhh
There was a similar movement years ago when a wacko invaded a movie theater and shot the audience with a machine gun. Instead of going to the streets to fight the illegal weapons commerce the government banned 10 games, the top of list was "Duke Nunken" and "Doom".
Trivia: 1-The games were old ones and everybody who could want do play the games, already had it. Some of then were even distributed free on polular computer magazines. 2- As an addicional act of authority they though about ban the movie thas was being featured in the theater: Fight Club with Brad Pitt.
Shhhurely some mistake guv,

Sometimes the logic of people who make these decisions are beyond my comprehension... though being nearly a Level 80 High Elf Wizard on Runneye must occlude my brains from seeing their logic.

Easy to blame everything else for your troubles rather than actually fixing it.

it's just poilitics... Nothing special, they don't even know what CounterStrike is, or how to play a VG.
Like that guy who wants to ban all games , Thomson or something, he just wants to earn people's trust to increase rep.
Unfortunately this is just another country in the list of countries with stupid game bans.

This is also a country where I can buy GTA games in the same places that sell toys for babies.
Correct the article please. The sell of the games is banned, not the game.

Wow/tibia is being banned too by the same judge lol.

By the way, this decision will probaly be appealed. This judge is a conservative catolic and he obey to other superior judges.

Just another ridiculus history from Brasil. And yes, Rio de Janeiro is the worst part of brazil if u are a tourist.
Media complained about Duke Nukem, because in fact the guy who invaded the theater did that based in the first level of the game. Police also found Duke Nukem installed in his computer and if fact was he preferred game.

About the "organ stealing", well that's a urban legend that started in the US, but doesn't happen in Brazil.

Still, I'm against the ban, it's stupid. They should enforce parental control.
I wonder what kind of drugs the Judge is on his own which gives him the ability to deduce that EverQuest is "Violent".

I've been playing EverQuest for a good many years now and if they think that EverQuest is violent then they may as hell well just ban The Interwibble... or maybe just completely ban PC's altogether.

Tools.
For a country that has transsexual bathrooms, and is one of the leaders in fetish pr0n. This is just silly.