Video Game Ratings Are Ignored By At Least Half of Parents, Says Report

We have the ESRB for a reason -- to provide parents with a detailed listing of what's included in games, be it violence, bloodshed, nudity or other things that could be harmful for kids. But a new report suggests that a good portion of parents in the UK look past such ratings in an effort to just give the kids something to play.

Childcare.co.uk recently conducted a survey of more than 2000 parents in the United Kingdom. Based on the results, they "found more than half let their children play video games for over 18 without supervision or knowledge of the game beforehand."

So what does that mean? Despite some clerks at GameStop and other retailers warning parents that little Timmy may not be the most ideal player of Grand Theft Auto V, this half of parents just don't seem to care what the kids play.

That's not to say that all parents are to blame. There are some that show concern for the games that their children get their hands on, preferring younger ones to play with games like Sonic the Hedgehog instead of, say, Call of Duty. But there have been a number of social users online noting how some GameStop employees were warning how games contained mature content and parents simply didn't care, buying the game anyway. And yet complain when games are too violent for said kids.

The rating system that was reviewed for the survey was PEGI, which is used in Europe. It doesn't cover what parents think of the ESRB system however, so it could be more effective than PEGI. But here's hoping parents are a little more observant. Some of these games are best experienced for the proper age group.

You can read more about the report here at Eurogamer. It's interesting stuff, especially when 18 percent of parents weren't cool with the idea of their 10-14 year old child seeing an 18+ movie. Just 18 percent. Wow.

Hopefully we'll see a similar survey here to see what parents think on these shores. We're not sure who would conduct it, but it'd be interesting to see its results.

(Hat tip to Eurogamer for the information.)