Playing Certain Video Games

24-4-2018 | IslamWeb

Question:

What's your view on skipping a story in a video game ? I 've been video games from a certain franchise that were known in the beginning family fun games, but then they decided to take a dark turn and started to include inappropiate elements in their games that were supposed to be cartoony, things that cannot be showns to kids. But due to negative backlash, they went back to the original friendly formula. My question is about the games, When I buy a game I just to play it and have fun that doesn't distract me from my responsibilities. Some elements in modern video games like the story or music are optional for the player to follow they can be skipped or turned off. Should I play the game in such manner so that I don't see something that may be bad for me to see ?

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Answer:

All perfect praise be to Allah, The Lord of the Worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allah, and that Muhammad is His slave and Messenger.

It is not clear to us what you mean by your question and what is the “story” to which you referred in the question. In any case, electronic and video games are permissible if they are free from Islamic prohibitions, such as gambling, betting, immoral pictures, music, and promoting what is forbidden, Shirk, corrupt beliefs, calling to vice and so forth.

However, if the game has music, for example, and the player plays while muting the music, then there is no harm in playing this game according to the view that we adopt here in Islamweb. This is because the prohibition of listening to music is inexistent in this case.

Also, if there are forbidden pictures in this game and it is possible to remove them (delete them) or avoid them, then, in this case, it is not forbidden to play this case.

For more benefit, please refer to Fataawa 312397, 243997, 83778, 95009, and 86146.

Allah knows best.