Video Game Rating Enforcement Actually Working
The Federal Trade Commission has just published the results of it's latest investigation into the sale of M rated games to minors and things are looking up. The FTC sent underage "secret shoppers" to various outlets to see how many places would sell the M rated games without checking IDs. The results show that only 20% of the shoppers were able to get the games, which is a marked improvement over last year's 42%. This is a huge decline given that in 2000 the rating was upwards around 85%. The various outlets were also rated individually with Gamestop/Eb coming out on top with a mere 6% while Hollywood Video was the worst offender with a whopping 40%. DVD sellers and movie theaters didn't do quite as well with 50% and 35% respectively.
So, it looks like perhaps gaming is proving itself to be more self regulating that many of the naysayers thought. It's great to see games coming out on top over DVD and movies for once and maybe soon we'll see our industry taken a bit more seriously.
BREAKING - FTC Study Shows Massive Improvement in Video Game Rating Enforcement [GamePolitics]
Fruit Brute
Posted to Video Games on 8 May 2008
· Comments (1)
Other stuff like this: ftc, ratings, video games
As a former Toys "R" US video game manager - it makes me sad to see how badly they scored.