Companies when making projects game for example need to consider many different elements, these being ethical, regulatory and legal.
Starting with issues that could come with legality, you need to make sure your work is protected, which is done by copyright so no one can steal or take your work but this can only be done if all your work, but if it isn't you need to get assignments from the creators, but if there, for example are people in the game based on real people you need their permission. Terms and Conditions are also required which regulate the use of your game and distribution agreements, this contains information about use of personal data and cookies, online messaging, basically a run down of what the game contains and what will be used when playing, normally accepting is the only way you can play. Another legal issue is that the target market must match the game, so if it was aimed for children you wouldn't have violence, guns, blood, drugs, etc. so the game must be matched with the correct PEGI rating to make it clear to the buyer.
Creators of games must consider ethical elements, a big concern, mainly from parents are addiction, because they don't want excessive playing of games to affect them mentally and their school life, even though many people think games are designed to do just that. Some symptoms of addiction include; preoccupation, withdrawal symptoms (Sadness, anxiety), giving up other activities, losing a job, to name a few. A person will be diagnosed with addiction if they have about 5 symptoms, some scientists say gaming addiction is like gambling addiction. For game studios to help problematic gaming, they could collaborate with mental health professionals to identify. understand and help problematic gamers. This relates to my second point about ethics, loot boxes, players, just like gambling, could get addicted to spending money on them to try and get the things they went, but ultimately do not, then end up spending mountains of money, which could also cause them to have an actual gambling addiction later on in life, spending with no reward from it but loss. a way this could be helped is if loot boxes were only in games rated 18+ / mature but all rewards available at the same rating.
The final component game companies must consider is regulatory which is tied in with both ethics and legal legislation, it debates whether the content of games is becoming too explicit and too violent to be exposed and be available to the general public, rather than kept to discretion. Even though there is a rating on these games, people believe its not enough to stop younger people from playing these games, therefore having an extremely graphic game could be very damaging to the people playing and no one wants that, and the game company won't be wanting a law suit either.
So overall the game company need to take these precautions if they don't want a damaged reputation and image, but if they were to choose not to take these precautions, there would be a lot of messed up people in the world and many law suits going their way.
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