Posted in: Games, Video Games | Tagged: ESRB, PEGI

The ESRB & PEGI Will Keep Rating Games During The Coronavirus

Probably some of the last groups of people the video games industry were thinking about during the coronavirus were the ESRB and PEGI. If you're not entirely familiar with those two groups, the ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board) is the video game rating system for North America, while PEGI (Pan European Game Information) is the system used in Europe. The majority of video games you see published that come from major companies usually have one of these two rating systems on them to tell you what's inside each game. Recent, the Japanese version known as CERO (Computer Entertainment Rating Organization) announced they were shutting down until at least May 6th, 2020. Which prompted people to wonder if either system would go down in North America or Europe. In an article published by IGN this week, they confirmed that both ratings boards were continuing to work as scheduled and that neither of them was predicting any kind of shutdown or planned downtime during the coronavirus.

While that news is interesting to hear, the reality of the situation is that the two organizations are pretty unnecessary at the moment. There's a lot of ground to cover in what the ESRB and PEGI do for the games industry, but the shorthand version is that there's really only one purpose to them existing in this day and age. To rate your game so that it can be added to retail shelves. Big retail outlets such as Walmart, Target, GameStop, and more can reject putting a video game on their shelves if they do not come with an official rating. That way parents know what is in the game when they purchase, and underaged gamers can't buy something mature without the proper ID. However, neither organization is required to publish a game. If Bethesda Softworks decided to publish something this week, and the ESRB dragged their feet or were shut down, they could still publish the game online through their own store or through online platforms like Steam and the Epic Games Store. So while we're sure there are companies concerned their game won't end up behind a glass case at Walmart, the reality, especially with the coronavirus keeping most people at home, is that their service is unnecessary right now.

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