In the wake of a vicious school shooting in Germany during March this year German politicians are banding together to not just ban a single game like previous politicians have tried after similar incidents but instead they are trying to ban the production and distribution of ALL violent video games in Germany. If they succeed the move could be law by as early as September. Now you may be thinking its ok I don't live in Germany so it won't affect me but you'd be WRONG! This development may give governments of other nations the balls to ban games in their own countries whilst putting a sever kibosh on kick ass game studio CryTek, of Far Cry and Crysis fame, whose operating base is located in Germany. Obviously this begs many questions like to what extreme will they ban violence, I mean will it only be extreme violence like gore and dismembermant or will it stem to children's games like Pokemon where they attack each other? More than likely it will just be extreme violence but then have they paid attention to recent studies that so far have found no link between violent video games and violent acts? Those same studies which have actually found that certain games, like the often violent First Person Shooters, are actually beneficial to your health? You'd have to assume that they are ignoring these studies by targeting violent video games. The video game industry has faced challenges like this before, largely in the States but this may be a harder one than any of those. Seriously though this is the same old story, there's a truly tragic incident which appears to come out of no where and obviously people want answers but people need to find a new scapegoat which isn't video games. Its just so easy for politicians and family groups to point the finger at violent video games, just like they have with music, movies and books before it whilst ignoring the real problems like dead beat parents, poverty, crime, bullying and a lack of counselling options or people trained to identify and deal with people who show social problems. Obviously these options, amongst others, must require too much effort or money to implement so the politicians don't want to know about them and instead they attack video games. I'm not saying that violent video games don't affect people but so far we have no evidence to suggest they do and until we find such evidence then video games should not be able to be used as a scapegoat. I mean sure regulate them more with stricter ratings systems and point of sale restrictions whilst informing and educating parents on what kids of certain ages should be playing but don't ban them. For now all we can do is wait and see what happens with this German situation and if it goes ahead the full ramifications it has for the rest of the gaming world.