OH NO HELP!! MY KID JUST SAW THE WORDS "GRAND THEFT AUTO" HE TOLD ME HE'S GONNA GO STEAL A CAR!

...sorry for all caps :)

 Exactly right. 

Damn this is so ridiculous. Its just Pure Ridiculous. That is what the thread Should be titled..

RIDICULOUS 

Would I be naïve if I said that the people who won’t buy M rated games because of this…probably aren’t really the target audience of these games anyway? For someone such as myself I know the content of the games I play, I’m o.k. with it, and some black cover isn’t going to stop me from playing/buying it. I’ll just probably double check to make sure I’m getting the right game.

Now as for boycotting…not going to do anything whatsoever since it’s usually only done by an insignificant minority. I already boycott things such as fast food (doesn’t qualify as real food IMO) but that doesn’t stop them either. I prefer Best Buy and Amazon over Wal-Mart anyway.

As far as the slippery slope fears that it’s all downhill from here, I’m reminded that such arguments are technically a logical fallacy as there isn’t an abundance of evidence to support that. I hardly think retailers will stop you from getting your M rated games anytime soon especially with such a large market for them. Again a black sleeve doesn’t stop you from buying/playing it – even though the idea is completely retarded. And if regulators do push too hard it will likely cause a backlash to counter it – resulting in it this sort of thing fizzling out as more acceptance increases.

As a big F-U to Walmart, the next ballsy developer should cover the top inch of the boxart with boobs and swear words.

If they are gonna treat it like porn, the industry should respond in turn.

walmart has alot of influence

I would not put this past Wal-Mart. After all, they sold music with bowdlerized lyrics in the 1990s.
But then again, this makes little sense, given how they use the jackets of DVDs to make sales (esp. risque ones -- see the unrated version of .... (see picture of women's breasts, though strategically blocked from view)).

Reading this though, my BS detector goes off. The site posting this is not one that I have heard of before and there appears to be no independent confirmation (and only one other site picking up on this).

Mike from Morgantown
(First Wii post)

Therein lies the problem.  I don't have a study or numbers, but a very large portion of M rated games are sold to the under 18 market.  It's like tabacco and alcohol sales.  They make a huge number of sales to the underage crowd.  Thus alcohol companies and tabacco companies never had a strong reason to prohibit sales to this group until federal laws made penalties too large to ignore. 

That's what people are worried about.  Now 14 year old Bobby can't buy my favorite M rated game.  Thus, less M rated games are made.  I don't really think people can be that upset about buying a game that has a cover.  Honestly all of Walmart's cases are locked anyway.  There is no way to avoid talking to clerk, so this doesn't require anymore effort to obtain the game.  Unless you are under 18.

I thought about this after I posted.
It would make sense to put something on the M games to require an ID check.
The "sleeve" could be their internal reminder ... and they are just casting in terms of doing it "for the children."
Nevertheless, I will believe it when I see it.
(And if they do it, we should complain about every R and unrated film and demand equal treatment).

Mike from Morgantown

Does anyone else feel like going into a store and just taking off the covers to look at the game and then leaving them off? And if it isn't possible to remove the cover, get a store manager and demand that they take the covers off so you can find the game you're looking for?

I hate Wal-Mart and their extra low prices. Yes, I shop there every week, but that's not the point. They try to present this wholesome, family friendly image, but they shit on their employees. Back in 1997, I used to work in a Wal-Mart in Atlanta, and they would literally lock me in the store when they closed at night. I was scheduled to work from 3pm to 11pm. Sometimes, I couldn't leave until 3am. After a few nights of missing my ride home, and walking home through a graveyard (the quickest/scariest route), I quit. Then, the manager told everyone that I WAS FIRED FOR STEALING?!

My girlfriend used to work for their distribution center, but when she missed work because our daughter was having seizures, they fired her. I've heard countless stories about the working conditions there too. But what can you do? They're the world's biggest retail chain.