10 Video Games Banned Overseas For Ridiculous Reasons

No, not the Millennial version of "literally" - AKA "figuratively" - but actual, for real, literally every single electronic game that's ever existed.

Dubbed Law 3037, the ban was enacted in 2002 as a way to curb illegal gambling. Anyone caught playing video games could be fined up to 75,000 Euros and spend as much as a year in prison.

For a law basically meant to put a stop to online poker, the wording seems just a tad broad. I mean, did the people who wrote this thing have any idea what they were talking about?

The answer, it turns out, is a big, giant, planetary-sized "NO," with the government outright admitting they intentionally worded the law this way because they were "incapable" of telling the difference between video games and illegal gambling machines.

After protests and intervention by the European Union, the law was relaxed and video games were allowed to be enjoyed in private. However, if an Internet cafe wanted to have a LAN tournament of StarCraft, they faced a very real threat of being raided and shut down by the police.

The European Court Of Justice stepped in and repealed the law in 2011, but there were still nine years there where pulling out your DS on the bus could land you in jail.