These guys did their time but they will not be allowed to enjoy their freedom on Xbox Live. Microsoft and a few other companies have been banning accounts on convicted sex offenders. Hit the jump for the full story on gaming sex offenders.
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Thousands of convicted sex offenders in the state of New York have been banned from online gaming networks run by Microsoft, Sony, Apple, and other companies. The purging of 3,580 accounts from Xbox Live and similar platforms was announced Thursday as the culmination of the New York Attorney General’s “Operation: Game Over” initiative.
Participating companies in Operation: Game Over included Microsoft, Apple, Blizzard Entertainment, Electronic Arts, Disney Interactive Media Group, Warner Brothers, and Sony.
“We must ensure online video game systems do not become a digital playground for dangerous predators, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said in a statement. “That means doing everything possible to block sex offenders from using gaming networks as a vehicle to prey on underage victims. I applaud all the companies participating in this first-of-its-kind initiative for taking online safety seriously and purging their networks of sex offenders. Together we are making the online community safer for our children, not allowing it to become a 21st century crime scene.”
Convicted sex offenders in New York already have to register their email addresses, screen names, and other online identifiers they use with the state by law, the Attorney General’s office stated, so it was a relatively simple matter to pass that information along to the participating companies to start purging those individuals from their networks.
Thursday’s purge marks the first time the law was applied to video game networks, according to Schneiderman.
The initiative was launched in response to “recent incidents of sexual predators using voice and text chat functions in online gaming services to lure underage victims across the country,” the statement said. One such incident cited by the AG’s office involved “Richard Kretovic, a 19-year-old man from Monroe County, [who] pled guilty to sexual abuse charges after meeting a 12-year-old boy on the popular online video game system Xbox Live. The man gained the boy’s trust over a period of three months, and then invited the boy over to his house where the abuse occurred, according to police.”
Microsoft vice president and deputy general counsel Rich Wallis praised the initiative for making “online gaming environments like Xbox Live … safer for everyone.”
The AG’s office also offered up the following Division of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS) rundown of sex offender numbers in New York and throughout the country:
New York State has more than 33,000 registered sex offenders: 12,800 are level 1 registered offenders (lowest risk of repeat offense); 11,948 are level 2 registered offenders (moderate risk of repeat offense); 8,331 are level 3 registered sex offenders (high risk of repeat offense and a threat to public safety exists). There are a total of approximately 745,000 registered sex offenders in the United States.
The statement also cited a Pew Research Center study that found that 27 percent of kids in the U.S. aged 12 to 17 “play games online with people they don’t know.”
