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In This Edition
- What PEGI’s new rules mean
- US ratings board reacts
- Pokemon’s higher age rating
- What about live service games?
Hello! Welcome back to The Game Business.
This week, we dive into the big conversation around the new European age rating rules. If you missed it, video games that feature loot boxes, and mechanics that reward gamers for playing regularly, now face having a higher age rating. It comes ahead of potential regulation against the video game industry from Governments trying to protect children online.
It’s a huge topic and we have multiple stories for you this week, including the views of the US age ratings board ESRB, plus an interview with Dirk Bosmans, the director general of the European ratings body PEGI, and Ian Rice, the director general of the Games Rating Authority.
You can watch or listen to the whole thing above (plus, my views on the Nvidia DLSS 5 controversy), or read the key quotes and stories below.
Enjoy!
“Age assurance is going to be part of the future for games”
The video game industry hopes new European age rating rules can convince lawmakers not to crack down too hard on video games.
The industry is facing regulation worldwide in a bid to better protect children online. The EU is looking to tackle ‘dark patterns’ in games, including loot boxes and addictive design, as part of its Digital Fairness Act. This could result in new legislation, such as game companies having to implement age verification, or even prevent young people from accessing games outright.
To get ahead of this, the Pan-European Game Information (PEGI) has introduced new age rating rules, which will mean games with loot boxes and ‘play-by-appointment’ mechanics will now be subjected to higher ratings. The new rules are:
Games with paid random items (loot boxes) will be rated PEGI 16
Social casino games will be rated PEGI 18.
Games with time- or quantity-limited offers, such as paid battle passes, will be rated PEGI 12. This can be lowered to PEGI 7 if in-game options that can turn off spending are used by default.
Games that use NFTs that can be traded will be rated PEGI 18.
Any game that offers incentives to revisit or ‘play-by-appointment’, such as daily quests, will be rated PEGI 7.
Games that include paid battle passes where rewards become unavailable if certain objectives are not met will be rated PEGI 12.
Games where a player’s acquired item or status can be lost if they do not return to the game will also be rated PEGI 12.
Games with unrestricted communication, and with no reporting system, will be rated PEGI 18.
Several major publishers have told The Game Business that they “broadly welcome” the new ratings, as it highlights the industry’s ability to self-regulate.
“Is this going to achieve all our goals? We don’t know, but we think that this is what we need to do if we want to be able to move forward with a proportionate solution to the concerns that are raised above video games,” said Dirk Bosmans, director general of PEGI.
Ian Rice, director general of the Games Rating Authority, added: “PEGI’s always come from a perspective of the industry can do the right thing. That’s effectively why PEGI started in the first place. It’s about making sure that we remain current and in-line with the parental and political concerns of today.”
The video game industry could face having to introduce age verification/assurance, and there’s even the possibility of a ban on young people playing games. But PEGI cautions legislators about these solutions.
“It’s part of a debate that is still not fully mature yet,” Bosmans said. “In some territories, on some topics, there is an eagerness. But I would caution against moving too quickly, because it may not be the silver bullet that some people think it is.
“A ban is not going to be effective and age verification isn’t going amount to nothing if the parents don’t buy into it. It’s often portrayed that we’re pushing the responsibility onto the parents… But I’m simply saying that if you think you can do this without the parents, you’re very, very mistaken.
“[Concepts like] age verification and bans do not take into account that parents have to play an active role. Because if you keep kids away from things for many years, and you don’t stimulate a conversation with parents, what are you going to end up with when they’re suddenly old enough? They’re not assertive, they’re not informed. So, let’s start this slowly and early.”
“If you think you can do this without the parents, you’re very, very mistaken”
Bosmans does expect age verification to be “part of the future”, but there is a lot to consider.
“There are essentially 17 different potential scenarios. Are you talking verification for purchase and download? Are you talking each verification for daily access? Are we talking age verification between 18-plus and minors? Or PEGI 16 and PEGI 12? Or PEGI 7 and PEGI 3? We haven’t even got to that level of the conversation yet
“I’m happy that there are some test cases happening not in Europe and not on video games that might show the difficulties with this. Is age assurance is going to be part of the future? Yes, but I would be very cautious about embracing all of it immediately. There are still enough questions about privacy and data protection, which children have a right to as well, to be solved. Technology isn’t going to be the end-all solution. But it will play a role.”
PEGI will look at older online games
The new PEGI rules apply to games released from June onwards. This has received some criticism as it discounts legacy online games that are played regularly today, such as Genshin Impact and Rocket League.
But PEGI insists that these games will be looked at.
“We did not include a lot of detail about legacy products, because that’s something we want to figure out properly,” he told us. “It is actually a lot more complicated than you might think. When we said that only games submitted to us from June onwards will be classified, we meant only from June, not today or next week, which probably caused some confusion. We will be looking at some legacy products.
“Ask any age rating board in the world and they’ll tell you that with physical legacy products, don’t touch them. Because you’re simply going to add confusion by distributing a second batch of products with a different rating, and people won’t know which was the original, which is the new rating… that’s not going to help.”
Bosmans says that “leaving legacy live service games entirely untouched would not work out well in the long term.” However, it might not be possible to apply all the new rules to older titles.
“We need to give ourselves the time to find the proper parameters, because we introduced four new categories… can we do all of them? There are lots of games out there and a lot of them are constantly being updated. We cannot continuously check our back catalogue. But we’ve been tracking the presence of in-game purchases and paid random items for the last seven years, that gives us a very interesting database.
“That’s different for the ‘play-by-appointment’ category. We have no information about which games from the past have certain mechanics like that. It would be, in terms of resources, incredibly difficult to go back and [look at that]. So, we’ll probably have to make some really smart choices and then develop a plan of attack to address some legacy products under the new criteria.”
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US age ratings body will not adopt PEGI’s rules: “It could be confusing”
The US ratings agency ESRB says PEGI’s new rules “could be confusing” for people.
The Entertainment Software Rating Board is not planning to change its system to factor in loot boxes or similar mechanics.
“ESRB provides upfront notice to parents about interactive features by assigning Interactive Elements, including ‘Users Interact’, ‘In-Game Purchases’, and ‘In-Game Purchases (Includes Random Items)’ as part of its three-part rating system,” an ESRB spokesperson told The Game Business.
“ESRB’s age and content rating are based on the content of a game and the context in which it is presented to the player. ESRB’s research indicates that parents want upfront notice about features like online communications and the ability to spend real money on in-game purchases, but that it could be confusing if non-content related features influence rating category assignments. As such, there are currently no plans for ESRB to allow any factors outside of the content and context of a game to influence the age rating assignment.”
Games Rating Authority’s Ian Rice says that ESRB’s position is a “perspective that’s been held by ratings authorities for a long time.”
He said: “We’ve got to the point where we need to be more aware of what parental concerns look like now versus how they did 10 or 15 years ago.
“When it comes to classifications, I don’t think you can totally not factor in the context around games anymore. Obviously, we were looking to see what was happening elsewhere in the world. Germany developed a very similar approach recently. We were keeping a close eye on that. It was working out. We drew a lot of inspiration from there. This is eventually the direction that most regulators will move in.”
Bosmans added: “We’re conscious of the concerns that ESRB voices. If we add this, are parents losing information? You do want to inform them both about the content, and the context, of video games. But by integrating them both into an age rating, you have to be mindful that you may not be able to give all the levels of detail that you gave beforehand. This is a difficult exercise. But as Ian points out, the context of Germany is what inspired PEGI to do this. I totally appreciate that ESRB can take a different position.”
Pokémon Pokopia would have had a higher rating under new PEGI system
The headlines might be about loot boxes, but one of PEGI’s more significant changes is around ‘play-by-appointment’. This refers to mechanics that encourage players to return to a game.
The hit new Pokémon title Pokopia is rated PEGI 3. But it does feature rewards and tasks designed to encourage users to come back on a daily basis. Under PEGI’s new system (which begins in June), Pokopia would have been rated a PEGI 7.
Rice told us: “The play-by-appointment categories are around this idea of… is there something within that game, a built-in mechanic, that’s bringing the child back to the game when they wouldn’t necessarily have done that organically? So, there’s a particular thing, an event, a reward, that’s pulling them back in. And it’s not them going: ‘I really fancy playing the game today.’ That’s where we are pushing the rating slightly higher. It’s only going to go to a PEGI 7.”
Games adopt different approaches here. A title like Animal Crossing encourages daily play sessions, but these sessions are typically much shorter than an MMORPG.
“If we were going to bake in all of those degrees of separation into the criteria, I’m just imagining what the meeting would be. How long is acceptable to pull them back into the game for? And then there would be a two-hour conversation about whether it should be one or two hours. You just have to go with the broad idea of what you want to get to. It will have the correct descriptor. It’ll get a PEGI 7. And hopefully that will interest the parents into finding out why, because you can always go to our website and we’ll explain why.”
Bosmans added: “It was also pointed out in other committee conversations that this is stuff that a lot of people enjoy. It makes the game engaging, like a cliffhanger in a Netflix series. Which is where the compromise was found to not make it land in a very high age category. The primary purpose here was to inform parents that with that game you might have some uncomfortable conversations [with children].”
Meanwhile…
Nvidia has showcased DLSS 5, which it called an ‘AI-powered breakthrough in visual fidelity’. The firm showcased games including Starfield and Resident Evil Requiem using the technology, and it’s been backed by Bethesda, Capcom, NetEase, Tencent, Ubisoft Warner Bros and more. The reveal was heavily criticised because the tech appears to alter the face of the character models. Nvidia boss Jensen Huang says that online critics are “completely wrong”. He told Tom’s Hardware: “DLSS fuses controllability of geometry and textures and everything about the game with generative AI”. He said it’s not generative AI, it’s “content-control generative AI.”
Ubisoft has appointed Tencent and 2K veteran Julien Bares as general manager of its newly-formed Creative Houses 3 and 5. Bares was previously the VP of Tencent Games, and has held roles at 2K China, Ubisoft and more. Creative House 3 looks after live games such as The Crew and For Honor, whereas Creative House 5 covers casual games like Uno and Just Dance. Meanwhile, Thomas Andrén has been named the general manager of Ubisoft’s Creative Network.
Crystal Dynamics has announced more job cuts affecting 20 employees in its development and central operations departments. Its two upcoming Tomb Raider games are unaffected.
IOI Partners, the publishing arm of IO Interactive, and Build a Rocket Boy have ended its publishing agreement for MindsEye. Build a Rocket Boy will now take on sole publishing responsibilities for the game. It means the planned Hitman and MindsEye cross-over will no-longer be happening.
Sci-fi RPG Starfield is coming to PS5 on April 7. The Bethesda game was released on Xbox and PC in September 2023.
Resident Evil: Requiem is now on six million sales, which means it is still the fastest selling Resident Evil in history.
That’s it for today. Join us next week for more big stories, news, interviews and analysis. Until then, thank you for reading.
