Saudi Arabia Bans 47 Popular Video Games

Saudi has banned a number of popular video games after two children killed themselves

Posted on

18 July 2018

| Last updated on 18 July 2018

Popular Video Games That are Banned in Saudi Arabia

In a recent attempt to protect children from the influence of video games, Saudi Arabia has banned 47 video games in the Kingdom.

Video games have for a long time been a fun distraction for a lot of people. Something to sit and unwind for a while, while you get lost in a make-believe world. Then, get up, switch off the game and walk away until the next time that you sit down again to play. But for some people it isn’t as easy to just switch off and walk away. Some people are easily affected negatively by games and sometimes end up taking things too far. Children are especially at risk of being affected and influenced by video games.

This has again been proven after a 13-year-old girl and a 12-year-old boy killed themselves after playing a social media game called Blue Whale. The game is reportedly responsible for hundreds of child suicides across the world and especially in Russia. Blue Whale is a game where children are invited to play the game through social media platforms. They are assigned an administrator who gives them a series of tasks to perform over a period of 50 days. The final task which they should complete in order to “win” the game is to kill themselves.

In response to the deaths of these children, the Saudi General Commission for Audio-Visual Media has banned 47 popular video games in the Kingdom. The connection between the Blue Whale social media game and these video games titles were however not specified.

Some of the titles that were included in the ban are games such as Grand Theft Auto V, Hitman: Absolution, Assassins Creed 2 and Witcher. These games were banned for “unspecified violations of rules and regulations.”