"There's nothing wrong with a multi-national approach like PEGI, but you can see the problems involved in trying to regulate and enforce across dozens of countries."

orly? isn't down to each country to manage? some countries have difference Pegi age ratings so what this stuffy smug faced bureaucrat jabbering on about? maybe he should get back to hunting or having cucumber sandwiches on the lawn and leave games to the ppl that understand them

Germany has banned Gears of War. If PEGI had a truly universal system it would be banned in the UK as well. But each country does have some difference which eliminates the need for PEGI, and actually proves that the BBFC represents the UK best.

As stated in the news piece, Germany doesn't use PEGI. The sensitives in DE opted for their own ratings system - USK - so they could ban games that didn't have green blood or made Nazi reference and possibly some other heads-in-sand stuff like that.

I don't think PEGI has ever refused to rate a game.

Accepting that some countries are more sensitive and believe that it needs a higher rating for a particular game, the point of PEGI isn't to give a broadsweep rating - it's to present an internationally recognised ratings system to people that consume products from around the world, and to facilitate more open trade within the international community.

Look at it this way - imagine things from a developer or publisher's point of view with a PEGI-like system, where the dev/pubco passes its product to a single ratings body, gets feedback and ultimately a rating, then releases a single multi-language product simultaneously across all those countries.

Now look at it as its stands today - the dev/pubco has to submit its product to PEGI (EU), BBFC (UK), USK (DE), CERO (JP), ESRB (US/CA), OFLC (AU) - possibly some others if it wants to publish in China, India or the South Americas. The dev/pubco has to deal with all those bodies and their idiosyncrasies, managing lots of conflicting feedback and then, if it manages to get through all that, has to release numerous different products for each country, each with its own age ratings logo as per local legislature.

An internationally, or better still, globally recognised body is much better for the consumer and the creator.

Yeh, I mean you've got most of the videogame playing world...US/CA, EU. UK, JP...one would think that these reasonable people could agree on a nearly common standard (JP would probably be a bit different for obvious cultural reasons) Then you've got those wacky buggers in DE and AU, who everyone already knows you have to make special allowances for. Less importantly, Russia, China, and North Korea don't like it when you point out how f**ked up they are, or could be. I have no clue what India's stance on videogame censorship is, but if we could nail them down, thats most of the world, right there... South America, Africa, Middle East and the less savory bits of Southeast Asia is all thats left, and I just don't see dev/pubcos falling over themselves to cater to them any time soon...

But I don't see any reason why EU couldn't have a common standard, with DE being able to freak out on anything that impinges upon their sensitivities, possibly one that could be brought into close alignment with that used in the US/CA...which would cover most everywhere people want to sell games, aside from the aforementioned "special" cases of DE and AU. I can see why DE is so wierd...AU is more of a mystery...has the "Mad Max" series of movies had such an extreme prophetic impact that the Australian government is afraid that videogame violence might just be the catalyst to bring its vision of the future Down Under about?

The only issue with aligning, even slightly, the schemes in the EU and the US is the wildly differing attitudes to sexual content. I can imagine games in the US getting much straonger ratings than those in, for example, France if they show some breasts or something.


Oz is just a nanny state in general. Fireworks other than sparklers are banned for example.