Gamer nearly jailed over playing Pokemon GO in church

Update: After writing this news and it going live, I was informed that Sokolovsky received a suspended 3.5-year jail sentence, and was temporarily confined to a pre-trial detention center. Sokolovsky's lawyer said that he most likely won't appeal the verdict.

I'm sure there have been gamers that have played Pokemon GO in some of the weirdest places imaginable, but now there's been a Russian blogger who was arrested for playing Pokemon GO in a Russian church.

The blogger was slapped with charges that ranged from "violating religious feelings" to illegal possession of a pen that had a camera inside, with Ruslan Sokolovsky receiving a sentence of 3.5 years behind bars. Sokolovsky posted a video of himself playing Pokemon GO in the church, with Russian authorities saying that he showed "disrespect for society".

Russian news agency TASS reports: "In accordance with the expert evaluation, the court found blogger Sokolovsky guilty of inciting hatred, violating religious feelings and illegal possession of special technical means - a pen with a video camera".

Sokolovsky said to Russian news site Meduza last month: "I may be an idiot, but I am by no means an extremist. A long time ago, people were imprisoned in camps and for longer terms - not for 3.5 years, but for decades - because they [foully] joked, for example, about communism and about Stalin. Now it turns out that they want to imprison me for 3.5 years [in real terms] because [I] obscenely joked about Orthodoxy and about Patriarch Kirill. For me, this is savagery and barbarism. I do not understand how this is at all possible. Nevertheless, as we have seen, it is quite possible indeed".