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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.
Is the manager expected to work so closely to the employee, that they see every transaction that takes place? If so, couldn't they just use the manager to do the work, and get rid of the employee?
No, seriously. As someone entering the video game development industry, and who doesn't want to see the industry shackled by a decade of Hayes-code-esque "decency laws", I think it's about time for retailers to start picking up the slack WRT enforcement. Sooner or later the Jack Thompsons of the world are not going to be batshit insane self-destructors, and when that happens we need to be able to show that heavy-handed legislation is not the solution to keeping video games age-appropriate.
The opinions stated herein do not necessarily represent those of anybody at all. Deal with it.
Manhunt 2 is released this summer. In-store sales for that game will likely be adversely affected by this policy. I wonder how the Gamestop execs will feel after they miss out on the majority of sales of one of the hottest games for the PS2, during the summer school vacation break?
Not saying it's a game for kids. I'm just saying it's probably the parents job of being mindful of what their kids are playing, rather than leaving it up to some retailer.
VOTE!
Would they let Jack Thompson play the Donald Trump role here?
"You're fired!"
It would probably wet his panties to get to fire people like that. Certainly a new move on Gamestop's part. This is what we need instead of more stupid legislation.
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.
I like basketball!!1!
anyone who wants to have their manager's balls in a vice.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
A surge of non-video-game-playing 18 to 24 year olds have been seen purchasing games from GameStop that they have no interest in playing. When questioned, they said "I don't even have that console." Experts are unsure of why these post-teenage shoppers would be purchasing games and then quickly losing them, but experts will be watching closely to understand the phenomenon.
So all I really need to do if I hate my manager and don't care about my job is sell an M game to a 16 year old? This sounds like a really fun way to quit your crap Gamestop job while taking someone else (you probably hate) out with you. I have had a couple of jobs I would have exited a lot more readily if it meant that my boss would also be fired also.
The only way this will reasonably work is if the point-of-sale system requires manager approval to sell an M rated game. Hopefully the (ahem) genius that devised the ridiculous policy will at least figure out this simple way to make it somewhat fair.
Now I have to pay some homeless guy every time I want to buy a video game, not just when I want cigarettes or booze. Can GameStop start selling Olde English 800 to cut down on my transaction costs? Do these execs think high school kids are made of money??
I can see it now, disaffected 17 year old gamestop employee calls up his little brother (or someone unrelated, who knows?) and gets them to come in, buy an M rated game, gets fired, and takes his manager with me. yyyup.
It is my understanding that the movie industry adopted a rating system in order to prevent the eventual regulation of the movie industry. The game industry needs the same thing. The game industry has the same thing, but if it's not enforced by the retailers then it means nothing. Kudos to Gamestop for enforcing the existing system, so that an aspiring senator doesn't invent a new one.
You are awash in a sea of fiercely stated opinions. Obvious exits are: 'File->Quit', 'Reply', and 'Page Down'.
but only because Gamestop employees are dick-holes and deserve every bit of inconvenience and job-insecurity fate deals them. I wish i could be a Gamestop NARC.
You know, I don't support restricting availability of software to "younger" gamers.
;)
If you've played the game Postal (the first one, not the recent FPS "Postal 2"), you'll know it's excessively violent and pretty extreme what with people crawling along in agony, leaving a trail of blood on the ground behind them...
Anyway, I picked up a copy at the age of 13, despite various warnings right on the box (made by the game developer themselves not some parental-advisory group).
Playing Postal at the age of 13 didn't do a damned single negative thing. In fact it gave me a great way to release my pent up anger and frustration about the world around me during those times. If anything it was more *therapeutic* to me, than influential in a harmful way. This is of course merely my own experience and I'm a pretty "dark" kind of person to begin with, so violent stuff doesn't phase me, for instance loving movies like Natural Born Killers, Se7en, American History X etc. all throughout my teenage years...
Anyway, I was going to say I'll boycott GameStop, but I don't buy software anymore unless I *really* like it...
It used to be that alcohol was a part of man's daily life. Making water into beer and wine kept it potable for long periods of time. While "underage" - if you could call it that - drinking wasn't illegal, it was generally frowned upon for a man to let his son or daughter get roaring drunk. There was family oversight of drinking activities, which tended to restrain people from getting totally sloshed. That, and the fact that hard liquor hadn't been invented...
As the industrial era came upon us, families generally stopped producing alcohol. They could buy it more cheaply from the brewery than they could make it. Consequently, there came about laws which prevented minors from purchasing alcohol. Now the state had to step in to prevent unscrupulous shopkeepers from profiteering from inappropriate drinking. The rationale was pretty good - underage drinking does have deletrious effects on developing minds and bodies.
Still later, when the dangers of tobacco became apparent, selling it to minors was prohibited. Again, it was done with the intention of protecting children, and given that nicotine is more addictive than heroin, it didn't seem like such a bad law.
Now, in the Land of the Future(TM), selling strings of bits to minors is prohibited. Somehow, we are supposed to believe that children are not capable of dealing with violent video games, even though they'll see 16,000 murders on tv by the time they are 18. This restriction, mind you, from the same society that considers Jack Bauer torturing a suspect on national tv to be entertainment. Show it all you want on tv, but don't dare let a minor buy a violent video game.
What an improvement to society!
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
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.