Developers frustrated with ESRB cheaters

Speaking at the Montreal International Game Summit, developers spoke out against the practice trying to scam the ESRB out of a lower rating. "They say to the ESRB that it's a Teen rating rather than a Mature to try and sell more; you can do this just by sending them a video that doesn't show the most violent stuff and then you'll get the rating that you want rather than the rating you should get," said Rémi Racine, the CEO of Wet developer A2M, according to Edge. "Maybe getting your game out at a certain rating will help that game, but it's really not going to help the industry as a whole."

For its part, the ESRB says that it regularly checks up on games post-release, and those publishers who try to cheat their way into a lower rating could be slapped with a $1 million fine.

So, while cheaters may never prosper, when it comes to those who try and cheat the ESRB, the axiom might more accurately be "Cheaters may prosper, but only for a little while, and not even really at all in the grand scheme of things." Yeah, you're right, it lacks some punch. But you get the idea.

Reader Comments (73)

"They say to the ESRB that it's a Teen rating rather than a Mature to try and sell more"

Wait, games sell more with a T rating? I thought most of the better selling games, (excluding casual and Nintendo games) were rated M.

A good portion of them are.

It's like the movie industry-they add things to get a PG-13 or R rating, because PG is considered to be for kiddies.

It's a trade-off. M rated games may be seen as more appealing, but T rated games can be sold to a wider audience.

Honestly I forget to examine the ratings on these games...I mostly buy my games online. When I buy it in a store, I've been asked to produce ID for some rated games, then it hits me that this is a retail store, and this kind of blasphemy actually happens.

ESRB: motivation to buy games online (for me anyway).

So let me get this straight....

Say i'm activision poised to release Modern Warfare 3 on the masses.

I could slap a T on it for a million bucs?!?

i mean doing the math....

at 60 dollars a game that means i'd only need to sell an additional 20,000 units to make up for that 1 million dollar fee. Now i realize i publisher doesn't get 60 dollars a unit so lets get conservative and say they get 30.

So basically i can slap whatever rating i want on a game if it will get me over 40,000 extra units sold and i make more money?!

Man ESRB you need to really update your fines, should be like 5 million at least actually hurt the publishers wallet if they cheat the system.

it won't really hurt bigger companies like activision, but for smaller devs/publishers, $1 million is a pretty big fine to pay.

Haa haa. OK, I'm guilty of multi-tasking phail.

Should've read: "...wait...the ESRB has the authority to make someone pay a fine? That's pathetic. I think those idiots need to be rated AO"

At least I got a few comments and votes :p

And your reply fail will get a few more!

Congratulations. Your mother must be so proud.

Now for that one I'm pointing at the commenting system, because all I did was reply to the page telling me I had a new comment. I guess I fail as an internet commentator. Hopefully life will go on and I can re-gain the pride of my mother.

Someone Please cut together a E rating video of GTA4 or another M rated game.

hell the ESRB should be REQUIRED TO PLAY the games that rate ......... Its not like they aren't getting PAYED to rate them .....

Its a shill that they want to get a cartoonist bag of money with a dollar sign on it to watch a 10-30min clip montage of a game to pass upon the game their enlightened judgment.

wow I'm impressed the regularly check games post release, but if they thoroughly checked games pre release like they should be doing in the first place ...... well this probably wouldn't be an issue.

I mean honestly that would be like the MPAA rating a movie based on a 5min preview.

Yeah some games are going to be quick glances ..... like the three hundredth remake of tetris while other games with upwards of hundreds of game hours are going to well ...... take longer ...and probably more than just game play like reading through the character dialog script and looking over concept art that made it into the game... maybe the ESRB and the game developers should be collaborating and they should have ESRB beta testers whenever applicable.

Why can't they have people play the game? I know it is time consuming for some games, but for the most part they could set the game on easy mode and blast through it. Hell, give them god mode, and a way to go through all the quests/missions easier, and the ESRB is set. That is how it should be.

The game rating system sucks, If I was a developer I would try to cheat that system as well. In fact any developer that doesn't try and cheat the system is really just frustrated that there team wasn't smart enough to pull off that Teen rating themselves. Either way I'm well above the age for M rated games so it's not that I am angry because I can't get games, I just don't like the idea in general.

(the following is my opinion and does not attack anyone i am just stating what i believe)i was appalled that both uncharted games got teen ratings. when i played through them it seemed like every time drake jumped and slipped, or was being shot at he said Sh*t , and sully's frequent use of the words god d***it was ridiculous (more so in uncharted 1)

It didn't bother me, but you're not alone in thinking that. Uncharted is the first game that came to mind when I thought of games not fitting their ESRB ratings. I remember on several occasions I thought "how did this manage to get a T?" Especially near the end.

Prince of Persia is a good example of violence that fits a T rating. Uncharted is beyond that.

So, "Content rated by the ESRB" is a patent falsehood.

No offense, but it sounds like you've still got quite a bit of maturing to do.

I always hop on left 4 dead, and end up playing a few matches with a 13 year old. It's a mature game. These ratings don't stop shit!

one other thing that bothers me is that in the first one, i never killed a single white person. is drake a racist?! if you watch the zero punctuation video he explains it very well.

ESRB needs to change the M rating from 17+ to 18+ . because 18 would be adult and then the media couldn't attack games saying that "kids" are playing violent stuff . Because they would have to be an adult to buy it.

My beef is with AO rating vs M. Really? 17 vs 18? It's stupid. Even worse are stores that won't carry AO rated games, despite selling M rated games by the boatload.

And then the news media that keep making it sound like every single kid out there are playing M rated games only.

I can understand developer's frustration. But then again, they should just sell their games direct. (Does steam allow AO rated games?)

IMO we should just drop the hypocrisy and openly sell eroge like the Japanese. :P

Yeah, like my dad has this old thing I think it's a console called NES. It's like super old and it doesn't even have any M-rated games on it. I tried playing one of the games...Contra or something. It had shooting in it, but the enemies just blew up and disappeared instead of bleeding and grunting. I feel really sad for people who had to play games back then when there was nothing mature to play and the all the games sucked.

Ask yourself this, what is the difference in initial profit for a mainstream game if they are labeled Teen instead of Mature? Is it greater than the 1 million dollar fine? Odds are, most certainly.

So "Cheaters may prosper, but only for a little while, and not even really at all in the grand scheme of things."

Becomes:

"Cheaters will prosper, during the most important window of sales - the first month, and not even really feel the 1 million dollar fine in the long term in most cases."

Previous 50 Comments

Developers frustrated with ESRB cheaters

Reader Comments (73)

Posted: Nov 18th 2009 5:13PM bongoes said

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