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  • Over 2,100 sex offenders discovered and banned from online games

    by 
    Mike Schramm
    Mike Schramm
    12.20.2012

    New York Attorney General Eric T. Schniderman says that five gaming companies, including NCSoft and THQ, have agreed to purge the accounts of over 2100 registered sex offenders from their services. Earlier this year, over 3500 accounts were purged from major online game services run by Microsoft, Apple, Blizzard, EA, and others, and this latest drive adds more to that total (including some from Sony, which agreed to the initial purge but wasn't able to remove the accounts until now).The goal here is to keep registered sex offenders (who are required by law to register their email addresses, screen names, and other online information) away from children who might be playing on these platforms, and prevent them from contacting potential prey anonymously. Operation: Game Over, as this drive is being called, is the first instance of using this registration information to keep predators off of gaming networks. Hopefully, says Schniderman, it will help "block sex offenders from using gaming systems as a vehicle to prey on underage victims."