Recently, Russian gamers' attention was drawn to an interview of "Rossiyskaya Gazeta" with Sergey Boyarsky. The head of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, Information Technologies and Communications mentioned a bill on video game regulation in a conversation with the media.
He said that due to work with anti-fraud packages, "many things were pushed to the background," and noted:
On the other hand, of course, not everything that was initially envisioned worked out. For example, the bill on video game regulation has not yet reached the reading procedure; we have not received feedback from the government.
According to Boyarsky, despite the lack of industry regulation enshrined at the legislative level, "we have to respond to challenges." However, he believes that reacting only to egregious cases and immediately applying extreme measures is "probably not entirely correct."
As an example, he cited the story with Roblox, which "ended well." Earlier, the game was blocked, and then the developers fulfilled the requirements, and the ban was lifted.
Boyarsky believes that clear rules of the game that suit everyone should be developed:
Yes, the story with Roblox ended well, but this is an isolated case. We need to develop clear rules of the game that suit everyone. I think the 9th convocation will return to this issue, as basic industry regulation should still appear. And, of course, taking into account the comments made by market players at meetings and in the working group created to discuss regulation in this area.
The discussion of regulating the video game industry in Russia has been going on for several years. In 2024, a bill was prepared for introduction, and then experts noted: the document implies that all video game distributors in the Russian Federation, regardless of the country of origin, must identify users.
Industry representatives, in an interview with "Kommersant," then noted that there is a risk of blocking services like Steam, as they are unlikely to comply with the law's requirement for user identification:
[...] if the bill is adopted in its current version, foreign digital distributors will not meet the requirements. It is unlikely that they (Steam and GOG) will comply with the law's requirement, which, in turn, may serve as a pretext for their blocking.