Next week several big players in the gaming world will stage protests against the Stop Online Piracy Act.  Next Wednesday Reddit will be shutting down its service for twelve hours.  Red 5 Studios will also take their stand with Reddit by closing down the Firefall beta for 24 hours during January 18th.  Most notably Mojang has announced they too will stop Minecraft service that day.

It appears that the gaming community isn't willing to wait around for the 5th of November to roll around, and are standing up against SOPA in force.  This week Runic Games, Riot Games, and even Nvidia are taking a stand against this piece of legislation.  My concern is not whether or not this will get notice, but exactly what purpose this sort of protest serves.  

It's not like President Obama will try to log into Reddit on Wednesday morning to check the comments on his latest imur post only to find that the site has been taken down and immediately squash his plans to sign the act into law.  With protests such as these I am concerned that the cry goes unnoticed and the gamers themselves end up spending a day punished for what lawmakers are planning to do.  Now if this were an ISP shut down perhaps, or something else that would actually get Washington's attention, then that might be effective.  I wonder who else will join Operation SOPA Blackout.  Imagine if Bioware and Blizzard stepped up.  Now THAT would get some attention.

[via PC Gamer]