The White Helmets rescue a trapped child in Modern Warfare.
The White Helmets rescue a trapped child in Modern Warfare.
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YouTube won’t restrict simulated violence in video game content

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 2 min

YouTube said today that it will no longer restrict violent video game content, after an evaluation that concluded there is a difference between the simulated violence of movies and games and the depiction of real world violence.

I learned about this restriction when I posted a story about whether it was OK for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare developers to include a scene in their popular game that showed a child being forced to defend herself and kill a Russian soldier during a chemical attack on her village in a fictional Middle Eastern country. The scene also showed dead children and a dead dog.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.