New York is taking the reigns in a campaign to get registered sex offenders out of the gaming world. The State Attorney, Eric Schneiderman has announced his partnership with numerous tech companies in an attempt to purge the thousands of sex offenders that are engaged in online gaming. He has called the move, “Operation: Game Over”.
Schneiderman says that to ensure a safe online gaming environment, it would be ridiculous to allow registered sex offenders to play on the same grounds as children. He is doing everything in his power to assure that there are no sex offenders on the virtual playground.
As of now, more than 3500 registered sex offender accounts have been removed from the online gaming world. They have been banned from Xbox Live and popular games like World of Warcraft. This is groundbreaking news and perhaps a little overdue. Microsoft, Blizzard Entertainment, Disney interactive Media, Electronic Arts, Apple, Sony and Warner Brothers have all agreed to boot sex offenders off of their platforms as well. Quite a following. Good thing this idea caught fire.
It started when Richard Kretovic, a 19 year old boy, plead guilty to sexually abusing a 10 year old child that he met online through an Xbox Live account. He lured the boy to his home and then assaulted him. In response, New York authorities obtained a list of predators and began shutting them down. By law, the offenders have to register all forms of electronic communications and accounts, such as e-mail, screen names and other gamer tags.
According to a Pew Research Center study, 27 percent of gamers between the ages of 12 and 17 don’t know who they are playing with online. The actual results may be even higher. Even scarier, all the gaming consoles that offer online capability don’t force users to register a real name.
Microsoft has made it a mission to find more ways to keep the children who game online safe. There are over 40 million Xbox Live subscribers. By creating the laws that hold offenders to registering their online activities, there is less room for harmful activity.
This is a great thing for the online gaming world and more states should take action to remove sex offenders from their online platforms. Debates about the purging of sex offenders have even led to their removal from Facebook and Myspace. Soon it will be with other online social networks. Perhaps these are the first steps to abolishing online abuse. With new laws in place it will take a very savvy perp to pull off a horrible scheme to sexually abuse a child. There are parental controls available for children, but offenders often sneak by. The removal of their presence makes the most sense.
