GameStop Doesn't Mind High Turnover

In a classic draconian maneuver, GameStop issued a proclamation that any employee caught selling M rated games to minors would be immediately fired. If the said employee is a regular exploited hourly, then the manager is fired as well.

The first problem with this is enforceability. The one of the two people that would report such an incident would be the manager. The manager sure as hell isn't going to say a thing if he might get fired. That leaves the 14 year old kid that just bought the M rated game.

Now you might think that the kid won't say anything either, but it turns out that the ESRB does Mystery Shopping. The mystery shopper audit checks how well retailers do at denying minors access to M rated games. Shockingly 65% of the time the underage kid is rebuffed. That means at least 35 people will be fired from GameStop every 6 months.

When I was a cashier at Best Buy they didn't care who I sold too as long as I mentioned the extended warranty. That has probably changed recently since Best Buy is a part of the ESRB, and they don't want the government regulating their sales practices.

Ultimately these kinds of changes are a good thing since nobody wants underage kids playing ultra violent video games. I just want to make sure that all media is treated fairly. That means CD's with explicit lyrics, rated R movies, and Stephen King novels are treated the same way as rated M games.