Skyrim Player Points Out That the Game Lets Players Sell Drugs to Orphans

gamerant.com:

The ESRB’s M rating covers a relatively broad range of subject matter. Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim is arguably on the tamer side of that spectrum. While there’s violence, it’s not as graphic as Gears of War or the body horror of Dead Space. The game also pulls its punches with mature themes like sex and drug use.

It’s not the kind of game that one expects would let the player become a drug dealer and certainly not one that sells drugs to children. However, as one Reddit user recently pointed out, Skyrim lets players do precisely that.

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Reddit user MagnusIrony posted a screenshot of his character trading with the child NPC Sofie. Players may remember her as the orphan girl who sells flowers in the Stormcloak capital of Windhelm. While players can only trade a limited range of items with her, the screenshot indicates that the narcotic Redwater Skooma and hallucinogenic Sleeping Tree Sap are on that list. While the situation around Sleeping Tree Sap is somewhat ambiguous, The Elder Scrolls have always depicted Skooma and its variants as highly addictive and very illegal. Redwater Skooma is particularly dangerous since it’s both more potent and used by Skyrim’s vampires to soften up potential victims.

Obviously, despite some joking comments to the contrary, Bethesda did not deliberately give players the option to sell drugs to children. Instead, it’s a side effect of how the game classifies these items. Skooma, its Redwater Skooma variant, and Sleeping Tree Sap are all considered potions and show up under that category in the inventory and merchant interface. Sofie, meanwhile, sells flowers, which Skyrim treats as Alchemy Ingredients. Alchemy merchants buy and sell both