…we support young people's creativity and e-sport players, but again, children need to play games according to their age.
Solo (ANTARA) - Vice President-elect Gibran Rakabuming Raka has said that online games need to have age restrictions or age level categories to prevent any negative impact on children.

"I think games need to have age ratings," he said here on Tuesday in response to Tourism and Creative Economy Minister Sandiaga Salahuddin Uno's remarks that online games containing violence can have a negative impact and cause addiction in children.

He opined that one of the online games, Free Fire, indeed contains violence and its proper audience is adults.

"There are some scenes that are not appropriate for children," he added.

Therefore, he expressed the hope that a regulation will be made to tighten the supervision of online games. However, he said he does not want the regulation to limit young people's creativity.

"Once again, we are not limiting young people's creativity, especially those who want to become e-sport athletes. We need to support them," he added.

He said that there is a need to increase the monitoring of children playing online games. "Let children play the games according to their ages," he added.

Meanwhile, he said that he supports collaboration with gaming platforms such as Garena.

"We already have cooperation with Garena. There are Free Fire, Call of Duty, and so on. We need to strengthen this. The point is, we support young people's creativity and e-sport players, but again, children need to play games according to their age," he added.

Earlier, the Tourism and Creative Economy Ministry said that it is ready to block games that contain violence, including Free Fire, which is quite popular among children and teenagers.

"We are currently building the digital industry, one of which is games, but there are negative impacts such as violence," Minister Uno said.

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Translator: Aris W, Kenzu
Editor: Azis Kurmala
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