Digital rights in video games

14th December – The video game, despite being a cultural product, as well as a high-impact technological product, has traditionally been left aside both from the struggles for digital rights, as well as from the mechanisms for the promotion of culture and public policies. Recently, the first steps have been taken, such as the government’s attempt to regulate loot boxes, public funding for the promotion of video game production… but there is still a long way to go.

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Some of the problems we find, in this exclusively private environment, are data extractivism and the use of obscure design patterns that generate addictive behaviors, as well as the lack of transparency in algorithmic products protected under intellectual property laws. Not to mention the systematic harassment in multiplayer worlds and to professionals or the lack of diversity, precariousness and the absence of labor rights and unions in the industry. It has also become the favorite tool of digital capitalism, generating processes of videoludification of the social in all areas of life. If many of our rights in digital spaces are not fulfilled, this is amplified in the case of video games so that these virtual environments function today as spaces of exception.

These are the reasons that lead us to raise the need to put on the table the debate on the defense of digital rights in video games. As well as highlighting the need for video games -their production, distribution and consumption- to be a protected and regulated activity, so that the right to play is linked to the discourses of digital citizenship, citizen participation, digital rights and public policies.

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Address: Espai Societat Oberta (C/Sant Eusebi, 29 Barcelona)