Digital Trends

A new bill would make it mandatory for retailers to carry ratings on their software and enforce them.

Don’t expect it to balance a budget on time, but the New York State government can achieve things in record time if children and videogames and involved. That’s what happened Tuesday, according to an article on gamepolitics.com, which reports that a new bill aiming to crack down on children’s exposure to violent video games has passed the New York State Senate after just four days.

Rep. Andrew Lanza from Staten Island sponsored the bill, known as S.5888. It will create an “Advisory Council on Interactive Media and Youth Violence,” which will evaluate the existing ESRB and recommend “additional steps.” Currently, the ESRB is a self-regulated agency that exists independently of the government, and its restrictions on what software is appropriate are voluntarily enforced by retailers. The bill would force retailers to use some sort of rating system on the games they sell, although not explicitly ESRB ratings.

The most severe part of the bill is §614, which would make it mandatory for retailers to not only carry labeled software, but enforce the ratings by restricting software to children who are under the recommended age on the label. Currently, selling M-rated games to someone under 17 results mostly in bad press, but no legal repercussions. In the future, it could result in fines. However, the bill is unlikely to become law with this section intact, since such restrictions have been ruled unconstitutional over and over again in other parts of the country where they have cropped up, including Mississippi, Utah and Indiana.