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GameStop Cracks Down on Underage Game Sales
Via GamePolitics, which has commentary of its own on the situation, a report on the Destructoid site pointing out a new, harsher penalty for GameStop employees that sell M-Rated games to minors. To be blunt: they're fired. Not only that but their managers are fired too, for failing to keep an eye on them. This new policy was set down last week in a conference call, which also warned that 'secret shopper' sub-17-year-olds would be trying to keep game store employees on their toes. The article quotes statistics from the ESRB saying that the M-rated policy has, in the past, only been enforced 65% of the time. I would imagine this will work to fix that.
The only way I can see a sale to an "underage" child being reported is by a parent who notices the game being played (or on the floor/shelf/etc.) but not having had purchased it for the child. That is, a parent would come in and say "hey wtf why did you sell this to my kid despite this suggestion by the ESRB that it ought to be played by someone older?" I believe that it's the parent's responsibility to have prevented this to begin with (if he/she cares enough) by impressing on his/her child the importance of being sheltered from fictional violence and swearing.
GameStop is probably introducing such harsh rules in order to cover their own rear ends when it comes to parents trying to punish the game stores for failing to, essentially, enforce a rule the parents fail to set.
Being so blindly mindful of the ESRB rating is in my opinion completely irresponsible from any parent's perspective, and I wish GameStop wouldn't respect it as much as they do.
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After the refuse to sell them Manhunt, the kids will then be sitting in a store with $60 in their pocket surounded by video games, 90% of which they can buy. What do you think will happen next?
This might hurt the sales of Manhunt, but it won't have much effect on Gamestop.
That is totally fine though, the ratings arn't to prohibit minors from playing these games 100% of the times. It's for the kids to actually have to ask their parent and the parents to be involved in the loop. If the parents don't care, or find it completly acceptable which I'm sure some M games might even be for a 16/17 year old then the rating system has still succeeded. The parents might have still failed though.
Exactly.
Most of the ancedotal stories I've heard from game store employees over the years is that when one of them TRIED to refuse a sale of a "M" game to a kid, said kid would get his enraged parent to come into the store and yell at the clerk and his manager for violating constitutional rights. Most stories ended with the parent storming out of the store, vowing never to return. Definitely not a red-letter day for customer service...
Besides, it's not as though Gamestop is the only way to obtain this game. Kids will learn pretty quick NOT to shop at Gamestop for M games - and they'll figure out pretty quickly a way around this restriction. After all, we have actual LAWS with PUNISHMENTS for selling cigarettes, alcohol or porn to minors and I don't know about you, but I had ready access to all of that - and this was before the internet.
Just speaking from experience as a retail tool for Musicland Inc., the rules were not there to punish employees who were behaving badly. The rules were there so your bosses could contrive of reasons to fire you before you threatened them, and for underlings willing to subvert the system and get their bosses fired. I'm not saying that everyone who got canned for 'store theft' was innocent, but it was interesting to hear how "a-list" employees and managers would suddenly see a change in fortunes over a few months and then suddenly be fired for theft or other rules infractions.