The Federal Trade Commission tracks how often clerks stop minors attempting to buy restricted content. Children are stopped when trying to buy M-rated games 87 percent of the time.
The biggest impact of the Entertainment Software Ratings Board’s two decades is a single statistic: how often someone underage can buy a game with mature content from a store without being stopped by a clerk.
Happy anniversary, ESRB.
Twenty years ago today, when the ESRB issued its first game ratings, there were no accepted descriptions of video game content. If a parent wanted to buy a game, they had to judge the content based on the pictures and text on the box. Children could buy pretty much whatever they could pay for.
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