Ethical Implications in gaming could cause problems for the developer and publisher depending of how serious they are shown in the game. An example of ethical problems in gaming would be Resident Evil 5. This game caused a lot of controversy in the media due to the games depiction of African citizens. Resident Evil 5 is a game which involves zombies and the main point of the game is to find out what has caused it. However the game is based in Africa and all of the zombies in the game are depicted as African citizens. This caused problems due to every zombie being African and none of them being of any other ethnicity.
The Obscene Publications act takes into consideration trying to to offend anyone in there games by trying to keep aspects like graphic nudity, torture, pornography, rape, senseless killing and many other things out of there games unless it is really relevant in the narrative of the game.This is a controversial example of breaching ethical implications is the game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. This game includes a mission named "No Russian" which involves slaughtering hundreds of innocent civilians in an airport. This game caused a lot of controversy in the gaming industry due to the mission being of no relevance to the actually storyline and was just put in for the sake of it. However all COD games do include an option to turn off all potentially offensive content, but they do not tell you which parts will be the deleted.
Copyright for games is only used to protect the name of a game and does not work for the game idea, how to play or platforms it is on. The Copyright Law was established in 1709 and the last time it was amended was in 2009. The only parts of a game that can be copyrighted effectively are the sound tracks, characters and generally art assets.
An example a breach in copyright would be the facebook game creator Zynga. They stole Nimblebit's mobile game "Tiny Tower" and renamed it "Dream Heights". They changed the graphics style of the game and kept the exact same gameplay features including all of the items and upgrades in the game just renamed.
An example a breach in copyright would be the facebook game creator Zynga. They stole Nimblebit's mobile game "Tiny Tower" and renamed it "Dream Heights". They changed the graphics style of the game and kept the exact same gameplay features including all of the items and upgrades in the game just renamed.
Race Relations Act 1976 is an an act which makes it unlawful to discriminate people based on religion, race, nationality and colour. Race discrimination is when someone discriminates a person based on their skin colour, race, religion or nationality. An example of this in the gaming industry was the recently released game Bioshock Infinite. This game caused a lot of controversy among certain people due to the games forced baptism. In order to progress in the storyline you must be baptised or you cannot go any further.
The Official Secrets Act 1989 can be used in video games in the form of an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement). This when a user gets into an early version of the game that the developer does not want any information about it being released in its current state. If the NDA is breached then the user will normally be band from the game and in serious cases may be banned from all future titles by the company and may be sued in the process.