Former US senator and vice-presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman, whose crusade against violent videogames in the early '90s sparked the creation of the Entertainment Software Rating Board, has died at age 82.) said Lieberman's death was the result of"complications from a fall."
In 1993, prompted by the rise of"realistic" violence and sexual content in games like Mortal Kombat and Night Trap, Lieberman joined with fellow senator Herb Kohl to hold hearings on violence in videogames and its impact on children. Those hearings, and a proposed Video Game Rating Act of 1994, ultimately pressured the industry into forming the ESRB, a voluntary rating board that launched in September 1994 and remains in use, in a greatly expanded format, to this day.
"Any American who played games in the '90s remembers the period of pearl-clutching and pseudoscientific fear-mongering from senators like Joe Lieberman, who led a call to ban violent videogames,"."Government regulation of loot boxes would likely take us a step in that direction, opening the door for more laws around gaming content."