So the Supreme Court sided with the game industry and struck down CA's ban on selling violent games to kids. By a 7-2 vote even.

Source: CNN

Niiiiice!

It is fun that it came out of California, isn't it? There's been some speculation that the attempt was made simply to try to accommodate the movie industry and give it a leg up over the game industry. I don't think the idea is entirely without merit.

If the movie industry was supporting this in any way (I don't believe they were), that was a huge mistake on their part. They also rely on a self-imposed ratings system and the ESRB system used by video games in the US is based on the same system the movies use. If this law made it through, they were essentially saying that the self-imposed ratings are not good enough and a precedent would be set for further legal restrictions placed on top of the ratings system; a precedent that could also be applied to movies.

EDIT - Actually, it looks like the movie industry was not behind this at all, the MPAA has praised this decision: Source

I had heard about this. I'm glad to see that it got overturned.

Just did some quick checking and it seems the film industry rallied against the bill. So, while the speculation seems to be neat, it's unsupportable.

I don't think the issue was so much about the trustworthiness of self-applied rating boards, but about a new type of media, and whether it should be handled differently than established media. Since the film industry is already well established, I don't think they were in any real danger of change.

Well, based on the quote from the MPAA (see my post edit above), they felt there was some danger to their industry involved.

That doesn't surprise me, if this had been held as constitutional it could have had the nasty effect of sliding towards more formal censorship of their industry as well. Mind you that it wouldn't be inevitable, but it would embolden "family values" politicians to try harder.

I don't understand how banning the sale of violent video games to children restricts freedom of expression. Those laws are present here in the UK and Rockstar North have not needed to to cut down on the adult content in their games.

The problem rises from the way the law would have classified games as "violent". Instead of relying on the already established ratings system, a separate warning would need to be placed on any games that a government agency determined was too violent for children. How do they determine what is too violent? Basically it was a "I'll know it when I see it" approach; completely arbitrary and far too broad. Game makers would have no way of knowing until after their game is completed whether or not it was too violent and since the classification was completely subjective, what is not too violent today could very likely be too violent tomorrow. The entire thing was just too ambiguous and lacked any kind of standard for the game makers to follow.

That's not a constitutional issue, though.

The issue is that even violent video games are still an expression of speech. And it's not up to the government to limit the sale of those.

Actually, that is completely a constitutional issue as they were essentially using the same process/rules to define violent video games that define the obscenity exception of the First Amendment. The limitation of sales was just the effect of violating the First Amendment by defining violent video games in such a manner.

The opinions cite that the government is not to make moral judgements on it at all. Not that they simply only have to do it well and standardized.

Under our Constitution, “esthetic and moral judgments about art and literature . . . are for the individual to make, not for the Government to decree, even with the mandate or approval of a majority.” United States v. Playboy Entertainment Group, Inc., 529 U. S. 803, 818 (2000).