In the wake of the controversy over explicit sex action embedded within “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas,” the Entertainment Software Ratings Board has made the title only the 19th video game to receive the AO (“Adults Only”) rating. Best Buy, Target, Wal-Mart and others are pulling the title from their shelves.
The ESRB found that the sex scenes had been hidden in the game from the time of its launch last fall, and that hackers had not created the content later — as the game’s maker has claimed.
All of which begs two questions:
1. How sophisticated a regulatory system do we have when embedded content, available to children, is only discovered 10 months after a video game is released?
2. Doe this regulatory system really have teeth when only a handful of games have ever received the AO rating?
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