| Bristow9091 said: Can someone put this into simpler terms for me please, because I don't see a problem here; "They're trying to ban the sale of violent videogames to minors" So they're going to stop a 12 year old buying an 18 rated game? How is this a bad thing? It's common sense, in any game store, they wouldn't let that happen anyway, the customer would need ID if they look underage, can someone tell me where the problem is? It just seems like common sense, and yet everyone is raging over it o.O |
It could stop a 12 year old buying a M17 rated game in America,
Or a 17 year old buying a PG13 rated game in America.
Basically this law makes age ratings as a guide for selling games irrelevent because each state can now legally enforce its own guidelines. For example a PG-13 game is now (in real terms) an 18 rated restricted product because it meets the guidelines set by a state. This is the exact opposite of what Europe is trying to do by unifying its rating system under a single classification system (PEGI) and instead in America you will have as many classification systems as there are states who want to impose restrictions. It's a nightmare for games companies and anti sensorship bodies and games companies will have to balance wanting to release their game unsensored which the reality that it will be a restricted product in several states as a result. Games companies are not going to release several versions of their game throughout America to meet each of the states criteria, Americans will just get one censored version.
I think the big issue is that gamers don't really understand the legislation and think that this law is just legally enforcing the sale of the existing rating system when it is doing the opposite and allowing individual states to completely ignore it in favour of thier own rating systems.
