The Manhunt 2 fallout continues as California State Sen. Leland Yee (D) issues a call for the ESRB to explain its about-face on Manhunt 2 and backs an earlier demand for a federal investigation into the matter.
Yee, of course, is the architect of California’s 2005 video game law, which was recently declared unconstitutional by a federal judge. In a just-issued press release, Yee said:
Parents can’t trust a rating system that doesn’t even disclose how they come to a particular rating. The ESRB and Rockstar should end this game of secrecy by immediately unveiling what content has been changed to grant the new rating and what correspondence occurred between the ESRB and Rockstar to come to this conclusion. Unfortunately, history shows that we must be quite skeptical of these two entities.
Clearly the ESRB has a conflict of interest in rating these games. It is time to bring transparency to this rating system and for the industry to be held accountable. I join the [Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood] in urging the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the process by which Manhunt 2’s rating was downgraded from AO to M.
