Game Ratings Law In Question

Go ahead kids, buy Condemned 2!

In what has to be among one of the most embarrassing legal blunders of recent years, the BBC has reported that a legal error made around 25 years ago has voided the current laws protecting minors from buying adult rated games and DVDs.

The Video Recordings Act, first brought to government by Margaret Thatcher in 1984, is no longer in effect as an administrative error meant the European Commission was not aware of it. Anyone convicted under the law will not have their sentences overturned, but until the Act is resubmitted to the European Commission it is no longer enforceable. It will apparently be back into effect in around three months.

While it’s shocking that this has been overlooked for the past 25 years, it borders on the hilarious that there could be such a commotion over games such as Manhunt 2 or Condemned 2. If we knew then what we do now, we would have realised that retailers could have sold 18-rated games to five-year-olds and the government couldn’t have done a thing.

Obviously, that’s not strictly true, as there is the matter of moral standings, but it goes to show that sometimes laws that effect our lives are not always passed through the proper channels before they are put into effect.