Another year, another congressman proposing legislation demanding some sort of label on video games. This time around it’s Rep. Jim Matheson (D-Utah), who introduced HR287, the Video Games Ratings Enforcement Act for consideration by the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee.
The act as written would require all games sold at US retailers to have a “clear and conspicuous” rating label from the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB,) and to give customers information on what those ratings means. This portion would have little practical effect on the state of the game market, as most major retailers already refuse to carry games that don’t sport an ESRB rating (and, thus, almost all retail games carry such a rating). But it would make failure to comply a criminal matter rather than an issue of internal industry enforcement.
The second portion of the act would prevent retailers from selling AO-rated games to buyers under 18 and M-rated games to buyers under 17, as suggested by the ESRB. Again, most retailers already comply with this voluntarily, but this section of the law also seems to directly contradict the landmark 2011 Supreme Court ruling that overturned a law imposing similar content-based sales restrictions on games in California.
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