If I may channel my inner political pundit for a second, there has always been a war on video games in this country. Every time a tragedy strikes, people are quick to blame Call of Duty and other violent video games as the root cause. Gaming is the vogue media, after all, and since pundits have gotten bored of blaming violent movies and explicit lyrics in music, it’s obvious that we are next on the chopping block.
That being said, sometimes there are decent laws proposed that could help the gaming community in general. For example, bill HR287, the Video Games Ratings Enforcement Act, recently proposed by Representative Jim Matheson (D-Utah), would require all US retailers of videogames to have a “clear and conspicuous” rating from the ESRB on every single game they sell. In addition, it would require these retailers to provide information to their customers about what these ratings mean.
The bill would also prohibit the sale of AO rated games to anyone under 18 and M rated games to anyone under 17. Most retailers already comply with this guideline, but this bill would require it to become a federal mandate.
If this bill should pass, violations of the above guidelines could result into penalties of up to $5,000.
Of course, gamers are going to have a knee jerk reaction to any sort of gaming regulation, but this bill doesn’t seem so bad. At the very least, it could reduce the amount of racist 10 year olds on Call of Duty servers.
Source: ArcTechnica