Philippine Senator Risa Hontiveros resumed a legislative probe into the safety of online games following a rare school shooting that killed three people in June 2026, but she did not call for games containing violent material to be banned in the country, contrary to a false claim spreading on social media. The ban was proposed by another government official, Interior Secretary Juanito Victor Remulla, and there are no official reports that Hontiveros had recommended a blanket ban on online games.
"This is Risa Hontiveros's online gaming ban," former congressman Kiko Barzaga said in a video shared to his Facebook page on June 28, where he has over 1.9 million followers.
The clip shows a whiteboard containing names of several video games, which he said could be removed from local online stores under Hontiveros' purported proposed ban.
The post emerged after the Senate Committee on Women and Children -- which Hontiveros chairs -- reopened a probe into online games after a rare school shooting in Tacloban in the central Philippines killed three students on June 22 (archived here and here).
The committee's investigation is a continuation of an earlier inquiry in April into the role of online gaming platforms in the radicalisation of children (archived link).
Local authorities removed the first-person shooting game GoreBox from online stores after they discovered that one of the teenage suspects is an avid player of the game (archived link).
GoreBox's Google Play Store page...
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