Carbon Games' Website Blocked By Portuguese Government

Yesterday, Carbon Games—developers of AirMech—were surprised and dismayed to learn that their website is now being blocked by the Portuguese government. Anyone attempting to access the company's website from any major Portuguese ISP will now be shown the message above. The message translates to "the site that you’re trying to reach was blocked due to an order from the Regulator Agency."

Portugal's Regulator Agency works with anti-piracy groups and Portuguese ISPs to block sites linked to piracy. According to tech news site eTeknix, "a minimum of 500 links" leading to copyright-infringing websites are required in order for copyright holders to request blocking a website in this manner. This begs the question of where these links supposedly are or what infringing activity Carbon Games are supposedly taking part in.

James Green, Carbon Games' Game Director issued the following statement.

"Our currently released game AirMech is free for everyone to play, and as we are the original creators it's super confusing why we would be blocked. I expect this is just a cause of an automated system going out of control, and I hope this serves as an example of why automated systems to block people's access to information can be so dangerous. It's a shame that Portugal is going down the same path as some other countries who try to restrict what their citizens can see online."

Hopefully, this will be resolved shortly. In the meantime, Reddit is collecting all of the information that they can about the block here.