Gamers, take heed: a new district technology policy is set to take effect on Jan. 20, which will greatly impact the way Millard students use technology in school. In an email from the district technology department, it was announced that locally downloaded games will be blocked from running. Middle school students have been the main guinea pigs for this change in policy, as it has been in effect for them since December.

This increases the security of the district and prevents bad actors from being able to get into student’s computers and access district data, but the primary reason for this change is to get rid of games. From January 20th onward, when high school students go to run their downloaded video games, they will be greeted with a pop-up that reads, “This app has been blocked by your system administrator.”

This can be troublesome for the gamers among us.. A large portion of the games that would be downloaded and run, allow for the user to progress through the game. Two games that have been previously playable like Cuphead and Geometry Dash feature increasingly difficult levels that gamers have pride in completing. Unfortunately, all of the time spent on progressing through these difficult levels will be lost when those apps are blacklisted. To preserve their progress, students should consider transferring their saved data to a USB drive before January 20th.

If students believe that a blocked application should not be blocked, they can submit a helpdesk ticket with the application details for further evaluation. The full implications of this policy change are yet to be seen, but it’s clear that students who rely on locally installed games will be greatly impacted.