'Secret shoppers' tag video game sellers
Allie Martin and Marty Cooper - OneNewsNow - 7/30/2008 9:00:00 AM

An undercover investigation by the Parents Television Council shows that some of the nation's largest retailers regularly sell violent and sexually graphic video games to minors.

The secret shopper campaign ran from November 2007 through July 2008 and involved Parents Television Council (PTC) grassroots chapters in 16 states. Minors from 11 to 16 years old – "both boys and girls of diverse ethnic backgrounds" – were sent to video game retailers and major stores, where they attempted to find a Mature-rated (M) video game and purchase it.

The PTC focused most of its visits on major store chains such as Best Buy, Circuit City, Game Stop, Hollywood Video, Kmart, Target, Toys "R" Us, Blockbuster, and Wal-Mart. Most of the tweens who were successful in their attempt to purchase the game reported that cashiers mostly by-passed the cash register's promptings for IDs and hardly ever asked their ages.

Overall, the PTC says the stores violated their age restriction policies by selling M-rated video games to minors 34 percent of the time. Best Buy and Game Stop were the best of the bunch, each selling M-rated video games to minors only eight percent of the time.

Gavin McKiernan is with the PTC. "You had Circuit City failing 60 percent of the time; Kmart and Sears half the time; Hollywood Video failing half the time. Target failed 41 percent of the time, and Wal-Mart and Blockbuster were at 36 and 38 percent of the time failing," McKiernan notes. "None of these are very flattering statistics."

According to a PTC press release, the Federal Trade Commission reported a lower overall failure rate – 20 percent – than the PTC. Despite the discrepancy, PTC president Tim Winter says there is no excuse for retailers ignoring "their industry's own age restriction policies." He contends any failure rate is not only problematic but also "downright pathetic."

Winter believes the problem will continue because there are no consequences for these retailers. He argues they treat the guidelines as merely "suggestions with no repercussions." Winter is calling for a monetary consequence for these retailers because he believes parents should be able to count on "age restrictions for adult entertainment to be enforced at the retail level."

Senator Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi) recently introduced a bill that would hold these and other retailers accountable and provide "civil penalties for selling M-rated games to minors." McKiernan encourages parents to call their U.S. congressman and senators and ask them to support proposed legislation that would prohibit the distribution or sale of video games that do not have age-based content rating labels.

They ought to fine those companies for every offense. "Suggestions without repercussions" are meaningless. Those businesses want to make money and aren't going to follow rules that limit how much money they make without there being some sort of punishment for breaking the rules.