The Legal Status of Digital Games: A Comparative Analysis of Legal Regulations on Violence in Video Games

Abstract

This article examines the legal regulation of violence in video games from a comparative perspective, centering on the structural tension between freedom of expression and the protection of children. It first analyzes the United States model in light of Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Ass’n, where video games are deemed expression protected by the First Amendment and where content-based restrictions on violent games must satisfy an exceptionally demanding constitutional standard. It then turns to Australia’s mandatory, state-backed classification regime and Germany’s stringent youth-protection system, which combines USK age ratings with the Index (Indizierung) mechanism. South Korea’s “Shutdown Act” is assessed as a behavioral control experiment that targets play patterns and duration rather than content, the long-term effectiveness and legitimacy of which have remained contested. The article interprets these national approaches through the principles of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child—“the best interests of the child,” “access to information,” and “protection from harmful content”—as well as the International Committee of the Red Cross’s soft-law stance toward war-themed games, and it contrasts the United States’ liberty-oriented, high-evidence threshold with the precautionary, protection-oriented approaches in Australia and Germany amid scientific uncertainty. The final section considers, in the context of globalized digital distribution and increasingly complex in-game economic models, transnational age-rating systems such as IARC and emerging regulatory domains around loot boxes, addiction risk, and toxic in-game behavior, ultimately arguing for a flexible, multi-layered legal balance that prioritizes the protection of children and vulnerable groups without suppressing the artistic and expressive value of video games.