What would you do to protect minors from violent images? For the European Union, that would mean coaxing the video game industry to come up with a widely-accepted code of conduct for that very purpose. The EU has set a deadline for that, too. More politics follows after the jump.

It's not too long ago that video game firms in the UK voiced out how their own government "strangles" one of its own thriving industries, and they noted how the Canadian government could be so wise to encourage their game industry by pushing out helpful programs and incentives. Incidentally, the UK has noticed that too - but only after losing many studios to the pro-gaming nation. More industry news at the full story.

Ahah! Straight from Electronic Arts' Battlefield 2142 site, we have found that they have scheduled an all-weekend online ranked event.  The event will feature all unlocked weapons (yes all of them) so that players that haven't had the chance to try out or dreamed of trying out the unlockable weapons in-game can preview them.

The unlockables will be available during the course of four days. Count them: from this Friday to midnight (PST) of Monday, EA will be granting each unlockable to every player who logged in and are playing during the period.

The grants will come one-by-one, progressively, as players continue to battle each other in the epic battle of the European Union and the Pan Asian Coalition.

So what are you waiting for? Log in now!

It is the nature of every company to do everything in its power to promote its product. It's only logical, when you really think about it. With that said, can we ask you one thing? What do you think about viral marketing?

Before we proceed, we guess it is only proper to provide a definition of this practice for the purposes of discussion. As applied to the gaming industry: Viral marketing is a kind of advertising wherein a major company promotes its own product by coming up with a seemingly independent media like a blog and/o other amateur websites.

There. At the surface, it seems like a normal and harmless practice - the companies are just trying to create a word-of-mouth snowball effect to maximize profit. However, we have to take into consideration that these people are journalists as well. This practice is bordering on being unethical because how can one be objective if he's being paid by his news source?

This is the exact same reasoning given by the European Union as it announced plans to block and ban viral marketers or what it refers to as sock-puppets. The law, which states that it is illegal for companies to self-promote through websites which give the illusion of independence, will take effect on December 31, 2007.

The said law also covers people with vested interests reviewing their own products on various sites such as Amazon. Those who will violate the new directive will be named and shamed by Trading Standards or taken to court.

It seems that the French videogame community are going to have tough days ahead of it as the European Union just turned its sights to the booming industry. Currently, they are enjoying certain privileges, like tax breaks and other government incentives. The EU Competition Commission on the other hand, is thinking if they might have broken some rules.

"We must be sure that the measure will promote only genuine cultural projects and that it will not have the effect of an industrial policy instrument in favour of the videogames sector," explained Neelie Kroes, a commissioner of the said government agency. Kroes also mentioned an initial investigation, wherein they stated that the French scheme "may give rise to a potentially broad interpretation and it is not clear that they make it possible to select only videogames with a cultural content."

Developer trade group Association des Producteurs d'Oeuvres Multimedia together with the French government set up the scheme back in 2003. Accordingly, the objectives of the act are to promote culture, maintain and develop the videogame industry in France as well as for educational and training initiatives.

On a related matter, French company Nevrax and developer of MMO game Ryzom, has been on the gaming news these past few days. Accordingly, the company is soon to cease operations because of major financial woes.