Regulatory Issues in the Games Industry

Regulatory Issues

What actually is a regulatory issue? Regulation is about codes of standard.

A regulation is a legal provision that creates limits or constrains a right, duty or responsibility. Regulation can take many forms, including self-regulation by an industry such as through trade association. But do we REALLY need regulations? In a legal way yes. But in my opinion we shouldn’t really have them in place, because it’s Illegal to buy an 18 game underage not play it, so either way they will be getting the same amount of money from parents or guardians buying kids their favourite games that are too  high of age regulation for them.

As video games become better, some become more violent and the medium was considered by the media as ‘dangerous’ to the point some were banned! In order to retain a sense of order and reason to the sale and advertising of video games regulatory standards were created.

‘Riga’ is made up of representatives from across the UK games industry; it has historically included members from SCEE, Revolution, Blitz Games and many more. Its current head is Jason Kingsley, OBE he is the founder of Rebellion Developments.

Many of the worlds top publishers are members in the ESA they focus on running E3, supporting the ESRB, fighting piracy and fighting censorship.

In the UK, until summer 2012 the BBFC (British board of film classification) were the sole legally-enforced ratings board for Video games. As of summer 2012 PEGI have replaced them in this role. Due to a minor legislative error made in 1984, until 2009 the sale of age-restricted games.

PEGI (pan-European game information) provide ratings according to the traditional age breakdowns of Europe, complete with small icons to represent different elements of content. In Japan, they have two rating bodies: computer entertainment rating organisation (CERO), who work with video games for home consoles and PC (except games of a traditionally ‘adult’ nature) and the ethics organisation of a computer software (EOCS) who rate there games CERO won’t.

This has led to a culture of modifying games for release- this is almost always-referable to scrapping the project entirely. In china, you can’t show corpses. WoW: WotLK was changed for that region, making the undead and abominations have skin and be full objects/creatures.

So in general who are regulatory bodies/issues for? Us? The Industry? Or your parents? That question is for you to answer! Goodbye!