Enforcement of the rules is not the problem because the fact is that the rules need not be enforced as they are OPTIONAL. Retailers are not bound by law or contract to enforce the ratings, and the video game industry certainly doesn’t want to change that because it wants those extra sales to minors. If enforcement of the ESRB ratings became mandatory by the industry, that would be in effect no different than banning such sales to minors by law. The ESA’s argument against such laws has always been that they are censorship not that it should be the one to impose such censorship.

Mark Methenitis has a very legitimate point that the ESRB ratings are flawed because the games are not reviewed in their entirety or at all contextually by having the reviewers play even a portion of the actual game. The MPAA movie rating system is far from ideal, but at least its ratings aren’t based upon simply a text description of the movie and some stills or a trailer from it.