Iran cracks down on Battlefield 3, police arrest shopkeepers illegally selling EA’s game
The government of Iran is following up on its earlier ban of Electronic Arts’ latest first-person shooter, Battlefield 3, by making a number of arrests throughout the country.
A number of shopkeepers who were selling both original and pirated copies of the game have been arrested as the authorities look to follow through on the ban they had implemented.
If readers think this is made up, then the next testimony from a vendor in Iran may change that. He was quoted saying that the Iranian police had “raided (some shops) and arrested owners for selling the game secretly.”
The reason for the ban had been announced earlier as the game depicts the United States invading the nation of Iran, more specifically Tehran. This is not the first time that video games have taken inspiration from real world international situations as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 managed to give the United States’ their dream enemy with Russia joining in with Arab ‘insurgents’.
5000 “Iranian youths” apparently put forward an online petition which stated, “We understand that the story of a videogame is hypothetical… (But) we believe the game is purposely released at a time when the US is pushing the international community into fearing Iran.”
Video Games do tend to influence the opinions of the people who follow it and one has to understand the point of view of the people living in a hypothetically invaded country.
However, Electronic Arts seem to be seeing the bright side of all of this after the publisher released the following statement, “In that Battlefield 3 is not available for purchase in Iran, we can only hope the ban will prevent pirated copies reaching consumers there.”
In fact, EA ought to be rather impressed with the heavy hand of the Iranian government in terms of cutting down on p****y and although the publisher is not earning anything by not being allowed to sell in the region, they are also not losing any revenue in the sense that the crackdown is also on pirated versions of the game as well.
While the debate between how much influence a video game can have on the concerned ‘gaming’ demographic rages on, the ban has split the gaming community. Some believe that the ban is just, yet others are protesting that it is a violation of basics rights of people to choose for themselves what they do or do not want to be exposed to.
In the end, the ban is doing no harm to EA nor is it benefitting them, but at the same time it is the gamer that is missing out on the Battlefield 3 experience. At the same time though, if that is what the people want then it is not up to the rest of the world to judge them based on their own values and standards.
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