Contradicts the constitution and aims to restrict the industry, — Roman Lukyanov of Semenov & Pevzner on the bill to regulate the video game market

Today, on December 12th, a bill titled “On the Activity of Developing and Distributing Video Games in the Russian Federation” was introduced to the State Duma. We asked Roman Lukyanov, managing partner of the Semenov&Pevzner law firm, to share his thoughts on the project.

Roman Lukyanov

It's not entirely clear why this bill is needed at all.

Let’s go through its contentious aspects.

In Article 1, the bill declares that it “defines the legal framework for the activities of developing and distributing video games in the Russian Federation and establishes restrictions on these activities to protect morality, rights, and the legal interests of citizens.”

The thing is, a video game is the result of intellectual activity. As of today, I know of no other intellectual property for which a separate federal law has been written to “define the order of creation and distribution.” This wording inherently contradicts the freedom of creativity, which is enshrined and protected in Article 44 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation.

Moving on.

The bill is presented as directed at supporting the industry, but its subject actually points in another direction—toward imposing restrictions on the industry.

See, according to Article 3 of the bill, there are only three areas of state activity in regulating video games:

defining measures of support for development;
establishing requirements for distribution;
supervising distribution.

It is crucial to note that the terminology in Article 4 is extremely raw.

Just as an example:

“A video game is a program for electronic computing machines, created in an artistic, educational, animated, or other form based on a creative idea, reproducing images, sounds, united by a plot determined, among other things, by the actions of the user.”

First of all, only a small number of games are pure ECMs. The vast majority of video games are multimedia products.

Secondly, the logical categories seemingly proposed for some future classification lack uniformity: “artistic, educational, animated”—it’s like saying “white, cold, deep.”

Thirdly, the term suggests that all games have a plot; this raises two questions—does that mean anything without a plot isn’t a game? And secondly, what kind of plot could an ECM have?

Overall, there is a similar situation throughout the text with each term. For example, it specifies that “game property is the totality of electronic data.” I believe civil law specialists will be very surprised by such an interpretation.

Again, even though the bill is supposedly about industry support, it focuses almost entirely on a detailed description of restrictions. It outlines:

requirements for game distribution;
requirements for game distributors;
user identification requirements;
requirements for informing users about the game;
requirements for expert evaluations;
and so on.

At the same time, most of what the bill proposes to regulate is either already covered by broader norms of other federal laws (such as the Federal Law “On Information, Information Technologies, and Information Protection”, the Federal Law “On Personal Data”, etc.), or it is copied from analogous norms aimed at regulating specific entities (ORI, ABC, etc.).

Less than 10% of the text is actually related to industry support. In essence, it’s just one article that specifies forms of support:

full or partial financing of video game development, and other financial support;
organizing the training of specialists in video game development, supporting educational programs in fields related to video game development;
conducting scientific-analytical research on video game issues;
providing organizations involved in video game development with tax and duty benefits according to tax laws.

What can be said after reviewing the bill?

In my personal view, the current version of the bill does not align with the objectives of the Federal Law “On the Development of Creative Industries in the Russian Federation” (which will take effect on February 5, 2025). Incidentally, this same Federal Law contains an entire chapter dedicated to state support measures for creative industries, which is much broader in content than what’s in this bill.

The bill either duplicates provisions of other, already enacted federal laws, sometimes contradicts their content, contains unclear terminology, and essentially only creates additional barriers for the development of an industry that, frankly, is not currently in its best form. In any case, this bill, let’s say, is unlikely to help the industry.

Just for comparison. In Korea, since 2013, there exists a Game Industry Promotion Act. It has 48 extensive articles (compared to our 13) and various appendices. I think it's well-known how well the Korean game development sector is doing. So, just for comparison, here is how the subject of this law is formulated: the purpose of the law is to promote the development of the national economy and improve the quality of cultural life by developing the gaming industry and fostering a healthy gaming culture by establishing a foundation for the gaming industry and regulating issues related to the use of gaming products. I don’t want to draw any conclusions, but it seems such a purpose is significantly more advantageous than “defining the foundations of activities and restricting the activities of developing and distributing games.”