Can new age rating rules prevent a video game ban?

This week, Nvidia's new graphics technology proves controversial. GDC's Festival [music] sees its attendance fall. Ubisoft assigns new leaders, and we speak to PEGI about its major overhaul of the European age ratings. Hello, and welcome to the Game Business Show. This is episode 99. We're approaching our 1-year anniversary. We've just, as of yesterday, surpassed 22,000 subscribers across our channel, and that doesn't include the thousand people who watch us on TikTok. As he found out, some pretty senior industry people watch us on there, which is which is a bit wild to me, to be honest. But, then that's the whole point of this, you know, we'll come to you, whether you listen to us on a podcasting platform, or watch us on YouTube, or see us on TikTok, or watch us on Substack, or if you prefer to read it, you you can do that by our newsletter. You can do it by the gamebusiness.com. However, you want to do it, we're there. Um we still do two big editions a week, obviously, uh that are free for everybody. On Tuesday, we typically have a big interview. And we had Strauss Zelnick this week. And then Thursday is our more

topical news and database show, which is the one you've got today. And if you're a paying subscriber, you also get a micro version of our show every Monday, where we discuss the previous week's big stories. We also do a monthly market report for paying subscribers, as well. If you want to subscribe to us, whether you want to do it for free, or if you'd like to pay us and help us keep going, you can do it at the gamebusiness.com. Now, it's a big week for news, and one of the biggest stories is around European age ratings and the changes introduced by PEGI. In just a little while, I'm going to welcome Dirk Bosmans, who's the director general of PEGI, and Ian Rice, who's the director general of the Games Rating Authority in the UK, onto the show to discuss some of that. But, before we get to PEGI, there are some other stories to tackle. And the one that's been dominating the social conversation is the new DLSS 5 technology from Nvidia. Um you probably haven't been able to miss this if you're on social media. You would have seen this. The DLSS 5 is what uh Nvidia calls an AI-powered breakthrough in visual

fidelity. It makes the games look more realistic. They showcased titles including Starfield and Resident Evil Requiem using the technology, and it's been backed by a bunch of publishers, Bethesda, Capcom, NetEase, Tencent, Ubisoft, Warner Brothers, and so on. Its reveal went down badly, very badly, heavily criticized because the tech appears to alter the face of the character models. Nvidia boss Jensen Huang believes the reaction was over the top and that online critics are completely wrong. He told Tom's Hardware, DLSS fuses control ability of geometry and textures and everything about the game with generated AI. Basically, he's saying that developers can fine-tune the generative AI to fit their vision. He said it's not generative AI, it's content-controlled generative AI. Now, is it a storm in a teacup? It probably is, but the whole incident highlights the strength of feeling around AI and art, and a lot of it goes down to whether or not you consider video games as an art form or not. Um for me, like uh DLSS 5 or Unreal Engine or whatever, they're just our tools. They're like the film camera in the movie industry. It's

word processor if you're if you're a novelist. Years ago, I was asked to describe the difference between GDC and E3, and I said, "GDC is about paintbrushes, whereas E3 is about paintings." Um I'll stretch this metaphor further. DLSS 5 is like putting a sheet of glass over a painting that changes how it looks. Finals a novelty item, but it's not something you necessarily choose to do. Now, Huang's point, though, is that DLSS 5 is meant to make the artist achieve their vision beyond what they thought possible. It's not supposed to change the image in a way that the artist didn't intend. It wants to make those brushstrokes on the painting stronger, more vibrant vibrant. Now, I'll be honest, from an untrained eye, some of the stuff that was shown looked quite nice, but some of it, particularly the faces, they looked like Instagram filters. They looked like AI. And that is what people are criticizing. They don't like the look of it, and they don't think artists would like the look of it, either. I guess it I think in a large core cohort of our audience, they want authenticity. Listen to Troy Baker on our show earlier in the year, he talked about this. Like, art isn't It's supposed to be made by people, otherwise what's the point?

Strauss Zelnick actually also said the same thing sort of this week on our show. Video games are made by people, they're made by humans. Now, I'm sure AI can do some great things, you know, AI can make that PowerPoint presentation you need to do faster, or storyboard those ideas, or search for your emails, or speed up that mundane task, or come up with concepts even, or help you come up with concepts. But let's not use it to make Grace from Resident Evil look a little little more attractive, shall we, or perceived to be more attractive, as we saw this week. The audience doesn't really want that. But yes, big big big controversy around that. But hey, actually it's a big week for graphics news. Uh Nintendo has introduced something to which is really cool actually for Switch 2. So, Nintendo now allows Switch 1 games being played on Switch 2 to display in docked mode. What does that mean? Well, Switch 1 games typically run better when connected to a TV via the Switch 1 dock. If you You play in handheld mode, it doesn't look quite as nice as it as it [clears throat] does on the TV. Switch 2 is obviously a lot more powerful, it can do lots of cool things. And so, it can sort of act like a TV for

Switch 1 games. So, Switch 1 games on Switch 2 will present with nicer graphics, and there will be a performance boost, too. It's nice little extra for Switch 2 fans, and that's kind of an example of it actually, you know, not changing anything really apart from making it run a bit better. Also in tech news, PS5 Pro's PSSR PSSR update is now rolling out more games. This basically means titles like Armored Core 6, Monster Hunter World, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, Control will have improved resolution. So, you know what, big week for fans of graphics, of which I'm not really one, but um uh lots of news around those sort of subjects. Let's move on from all that stuff. Let's talk about Ubisoft again. Ubisoft's creative houses, if you remember, Ubisoft has split its business into five creative houses, which all have autonomy over the games they look after. The biggest creative house is creative house one or Vantage Studios, which, you know, includes Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, and Rainbow Six. That's partially owned by Tencent. Tencent invested in that. But, we now know some information about the other creative houses. We already know what games are in them, but we've

got some new leaders for those creative houses. We now know that creative house three, which focuses on live games like The Crew and For Honor, and creative house five, which looks after mobile and casual games like Uno and Just Dance, will be led by Julian Vaz, who is a former Tencent exec, actually. He also was general manager of 2K China, and he was a producer at Ubisoft for a very, very long time as well. He's going to lead those two organizations, creative house three and five. Ubisoft has also named Thomas Andren as the general manager of its creative network. That's a separate division that sort of supports all the creative houses. There's some studios in there that work across multiple games or work more across multiple houses. So, um new leaders there at Ubisoft. I do actually quite like the Ubisoft structure and creative house concept. I think it's interesting. I think it presents opportunities for them and and all sorts, but my worry is about the employees there. They're They're They're going on strike. They're disagreeing publicly with management. Um they're worried about being in the office all the time. They're having to deal with all sorts of gentleman challenges. Ubisoft isn't going to turn itself around unless its team is on

board with them, and right now it doesn't feel like they are. Uh so, there's work to be done there. Moving on from Ubisoft, fans of the game business micro would have heard me talk about this on Monday. It's about GDC. GDC saw 20,000 people walk through its doors, a drop of 10,000 over the year before. It's a big drop. Despite the attendee hit, however, the event is returning to San Francisco between March 1st and March 5th next year. GDC rebranded itself the GDC Festival of Gaming, if you've missed all this, to attract a broader audience. Um an audience that actually was mostly at GDC, but just weren't going to GDC itself. They're in the hotels and and sort of places around the show. GDC had some new talk sessions, new networking concepts, new pricing tiers. Overall, I think they did a good job, but they face some big challenges that are mostly outside of their control. There's the political landscape in the US, GDC did say they had attendees from 85 countries, but we know there was a that was a drop in people coming from abroad due to the political unrest and wars and all sorts of things going on in America

or with America. Also, the US game development scene is having a rough time. More so than most other markets. A lot of their big job losses across games have come in the US. And as GDC is the big US game development show, GDC will be feeling the brunt of that. But I still personally feel GDC is needed, it still plays a role in this industry, and the organizers did a decent job this year. It's just got some real challenges that are sort of outside of its control. Couple more stories before we get to Peggy. I'm going to do some fun sales stories, how about that? Resident Evil Requiem is on 6 million sales, which means it is still the fastest selling Resident Evil game in history. A couple weeks ago it hit 5 million. It's going to be the year for the Resident Evil IP. It celebrates its 30th anniversary this month. They're doing some concerts, they're doing a collaboration with Universal Studios in Japan. There's more Resident Evil Requiem content coming. Well done, Capcom. I'm still not quite finished with the game myself. I am though quite far into it, which is good for me. I'm nearly there. It is excellent. Well done, Capcom. Sticking with sales,

Pokémon Poképia, it's on 2.2 [clears throat] million sales, already number four in terms of Switch 2 game sales. But most significantly, I think most significantly, it's boosted sales of Switch 2 consoles. And in fact, over the course of week or two weeks before Poképia launched, basically Switch 2 sales have doubled in half a dozen markets. I can see that's across Japan and Europe. Don't have data for everywhere, but it's been a big jump. It could be a short sharp bump, and then it can maybe fall down again, but I wouldn't be surprised to see this game run and run and sales to pick up a little bit. Well done to the Pokémon company. It's done really well. Now, I'm going to talk about this Valve story. You may have seen it. It's a big lawsuit story coming out of New York, where the New York Attorney General Letitia James has accused Valve of unlawfully encouraging minors to gamble through loot boxes used in Counter-Strike 2, Team Fortress 2, and Dota 2. Valve isn't happy about this, unsurprisingly, and the firm took issue with a series of the Attorney General's requested alterations, such as preventing users from transferring digital items, as well as uh asking Valve to collect more personal details on players. Valve said the type of commitments the NYAG demanded from Valve

went far beyond what existing New York law requires, and even beyond New York itself. Valve also took a moment to condemn uh the Attorney General for its comments around games and real-world violence. Those cat- extraneous comments are a distraction and a mischaracterization we've all heard before. Numerous studies throughout the years have concluded there is no link between media and real-world violence. Indeed, many studies highlight the beneficial impact of games to users. Um this story, I bring it up because I think it's going to be relevant to our main topic on age ratings in a moment, but yeah. I'm going to finish on a couple of small stories before we invite Peggy on. IO Interactive, or rather its publishing arm IOI Partners, and Build a Rocket Boy have ended its publishing agreement for Minds Eye. Now, Build a Rocket Boy will now take on sole publishing responsibilities for the game. It means the planned Hitman and Minds Eye will no longer be happening. That's There was a collaboration between Hitman and Minds Eye that was going to happen. It's not happening now. Look, this partnership has been rough. Minds Eye launched and was heavily criticized upon its release.

Its sales were low. Build a Rocket Boy has had to lay off a bunch of staff, a huge number of staff, actually. And it's even claimed the game has been impacted by corporate sabotage. I mean, it's quite a weird one, this. IO Interactive will continue to publish its own games, obviously, including the upcoming James Bond game 007 First Light this May, which is gaining plenty of buzz online. And before we And one final story, major Xbox game Starfield is coming to PS5. The game was come actually coming to PS5 when it was first being developed, until Xbox stepped in, bought the company, and kept it on Xbox and PC. The game's reception was broadly positive at the time, but not overwhelmingly positive. However, the team has constantly updated it. I hear it's it's really really good. Um it's made some big improvements. The space RPG and all previously available content will launch on PS5 on April 7th. So, those are my those are the news things. If you enjoyed that news wrap-up, I do something like that every Monday on the Game Business Micro. Um you do have to be a paying subscriber to get that. So, if you want to subscribe, that'd be lovely. Uh but, if not,

I I welcome all subscribers. Let's dive into our main topic. Uh the European age ratings company PEGI has changed its ratings to cover loot boxes, in-game purchases, and mechanics that entice people, particularly children, to keep playing. These are the new ratings they've introduced. So, if your game has paid random items, that's loot boxes, the game will have to be rated PEGI 16. So, for someone like EA Sports FC, that's a PEGI 16 game now. Um social casino games need to be rated PEGI 18. That's mostly a mobile thing. Uh 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. Um any game that offers incentives to revisit, or what they call play by appointment, such as daily quests and things like that, 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. In addition, games where players' acquired item or status can be lost if they do not return to the game, will also be rated PEGI 12. Uh that's an interesting one, that. I'll talk to them in a moment about that. Games with unrestricted communication with no reporting system will be rated PEGI 18. There aren't many games that do that. This move puts PEGI in line with the German rating system USK, which is independent from PEGI. Uh USK made similar changes in 2023 due to the German Youth Protection Act. Now, I actually spoke with some developers this week and publishers, big publishers, and based on my conversations, it seems to be these PEGI changes are broadly well received. There's a growing fear of legislation against the video game industry. We've just seen it come to Brazil. Australia has made some moves, too. Things like age verification for games has been talked about, even outright banning video games for people under a certain age, as well. The video game industry is eager to avoid as much of that as it can, and so PEGI making these moves is seen as a positive by lots, at least the people I spoke to. Uh although not everybody agrees. Uh the

ESRB, that's the US age ratings body, isn't interested in following PEGI on this. They told me in a statement that the measures might prove confusing. The measures also only cover games that are coming out from June. It doesn't cover games coming out now, or even games that came out in previous years. And of course, a lot of the biggest games today, a lot of the games everyone's playing today, are games that came out years ago, years and years and years ago. So, there are questions. But the there's good news about those questions. I have guests to help me answer them. First, we have the PEGI Director General, Dirk Bosman, and Ian Rice of the Games Rating Authority, which is the statutory body that is actually responsible for rating video games in the UK. Hello, Ian. Hello, Dirk. Welcome to the show. Thank you very much. Nice to be here. Thank you. It's big news in the world of age ratings and PEGI. I'm trying to work out is this the biggest thing I've seen come out of PEGI since you started? I'm just going to say yes, probably, but I'll let
[laughter]
I'll let Dirk continue. It's the biggest

thing since I've been at PEGI, and I think Dirk and I probably been here for about the same time. So, yeah, it's the biggest thing, the biggest change away from our usual way of doing things, for sure. Yeah. Yeah, and it depends which parameters you use, but if you look at the amount of questions we're adding to the questionnaire, the amount of criteria, the amount of categories. We've We've never gone this big, but it's also quite normal because they're related issues. And so, this all sort of culminated to this point where we suddenly had to do them all at once. I wanted to say that I I One of the things I found interesting when the announcement came out last week was the lack of lack of noise I had from the industry. I had to go out there and find people. I had to speak to some of the biggest companies in the industry and go, "Hang on. Well, how do you feel about this?" Um and I'm talking about some really big companies. And they broadly, although not necessarily publicly, but they broadly seem welcoming, actually, of these changes. And I think from their perspective, it's a good way to demonstrate to lawmakers

who are looking at legislation at the moment that we can sort of police ourselves as an industry. And I know you're independent, but there's there's I think that that's sort of message it gets across. Do you think this achieves that? Do you think it sort of sends a positive message? It's certainly part of the of what we're trying to achieve. I mean, in some of the press articles, I saw references to the case against Valve and Steam in the United States, and people coming to conclusions, "Oh, so that happened. That's why Peggy did this." And go like, "Yeah, as if we read the news in the morning and said, 'Guys, we need to put out a press release by noon that says we're going to introduce four new categories.'" No, this has been preceded by months and months and months of work and lots of consultations. Even though we obviously need to inform lots of people, lots of companies, we have tried to involve as many as possible into sort of not just asking

whether this would work for them because, you know, not everything here is going to be entirely comfortable to everyone, but to make sure that they understand why this is important that we do this. Because the broader we get buy-in from all stakeholders, but primarily the sector, the higher the chances of success are. So, is this going to achieve all our goals? We don't know, but we think that this is what we need to do if, you know, we want to be able to move forward with a proportionate solution to the concerns that are raised about video games. Do you agree with that, Ian? Absolutely. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Um I mean, yeah, it's been something that's been a long time coming and and Peggy's always come from a perspective of look, industry can do the right thing. That's effectively why Peggy started in the first place was to kind of say to to regulators, look, an industry-led solution can be effective and it's just about making

sure that we remain current and in line with the parental concerns of today and political concerns of today. Um so, I think it's a really good move in the right direction, for sure. I find it interesting that that people are saying that this is a reaction to the Valve news, like some of your ESRB. I actually asked, cuz I was in the US when this broke. I was at the Game Developers Conference, or sorry, the GDC Festival of Gaming. Um I was in I was in the US when that news broke and I had a I I had a chat with the ESRB about whether they would do their own thing, what do they think of this? And they said that their research found that it could be confusing if non-content related features influence rating category assignments. As such, they are currently no plans to They're not going to basically they're not going to add in any factors outside of the content and context of the game to influence its age ratings. They obviously flag it when there's like loot boxes and stuff in the games, but they don't change the age rating. Um I don't know. I I've got my views on that statement. What do you make of it? Is it confusing if non-content related features are influencing the the ratings?

I think I think that's a perspective that's been held by rating authorities for a long time and I think we've gotten to the point where we need to be more aware of what parental concerns look like now versus how they did sort of 10-15 years ago. And I think
[laughter]
I've bought that flower from So, from from the from the Nintendo shop that just randomly makes noises. And I said to myself, "Don't leave it in the room when there's interviews getting on. It's just going to start talking." And it's just And I have done by mistake. You know, I'll I'll just do like, "Shut up, you. Shut up." Yeah.
[laughter]
I I I think in summary there's room for both pieces of information. I think they're both form a picture that parents want to know about when it comes to classifications. I don't think you can totally not factor in the context around games anymore. I think it is an important part, hence why we decided to make the change. And obviously we were looking to

see what was help happening elsewhere in the world. So, Germany um developed a very similar approach recently. So, we're keeping a close eye on that. Um obviously was was working out okay. So, we we drew a lot of inspiration from there. But I think this is eventually I think this is probably the direction that that most regulators would move in, not wanting to speak to plans of the ESRB down the line, but it it did look like things are are moving that way. Mhm. Yeah, and and and we're conscious of the concerns that the ESRB voices. If we add this, you know, are we losing information or are parents losing information by adding this? 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. So,

that is a difficult exercise. But as as Ian points out, the context of USK is what specifically, you know, inspired Peggy to do this in the context of European regulatory developments. So, I I totally appreciate that ESRB can take a different position on this. Mhm. Yeah. I also don't think they have the legislative threats. I think some of the stuff that's going on over here. But, I also think I I think about my own experiences when I when I as a parent myself, I don't look at the content descriptors. I'm not diving into the details. But, I look at Sorry. Sorry, Ian. But, I am Well, I do look at the age rating, right? And it's the thing, you know, I just it's the thing that I know. And if I'm looking at a game that looks to me like it's fine for my 6-year-old to play and it's got a 16 on the box, then I might go, "Hang on. Why is that a 16?" And that And that's cuz that's all what this is about. Like, parents will Every child's different. So, you know, what might be
[clears throat]
inappropriate for what might be an 18-rated game might be might be fine for someone who's 17

really if if you know that person, but also might be inappropriate for someone who's 25, right?
Yeah. I think sometimes the age rating is the thing that they look at. It's like I hang out with games critics. Everyone just goes to the review score. They don't read the actual review. So, sometimes I think that is the most important thing. And I think it There's elements in a game that perhaps is is not great to children or potentially not great for children. I think it needs to be in that number. Then parents can dive a bit deeper if they if they want to check out whether or not actually am I okay with my kid playing a game that might be a little bit rated a bit older than Not that I would suggest that would be a thing that parents should do obviously on an age rating conversation, but it's not a question. It's just my take on it.
Oh, yeah. What what you say, you know, corresponds to our overall messaging. We want to help parents make informed decisions. And for us, there is a material difference between a parent that is involved about, you know, the sorts of games that a 14-year-old plays and may as a result decide that a 16-rated game is fine. That's materially

different from a parent that doesn't care at all and has a 14-year-old that plays PEGI 16 games cuz that's not an informed parent and therefore the concerns about what might not be good for the child persist. Whereas in the in the in the in the former example, you know, I think that concern is a lot less important or less imminent. And
[clears throat]
have you had any pushback? I'm not I've not seen any myself, but have you had any since you revealed this last week? Not not really. I mean there there was so much news that, you know, the It's a lot going on right now. Most most of the press articles were like, okay, there's a lot of meat on the bone of this announcement and I think opinions still need to be formed about this. If you look at comments, it's like some people saying, oh, this is great, but yeah, who cares about PEGI or parents don't look at PEGI, which happened to usually be the same people that a couple of weeks ago were angry about PEGI not doing anything. So it's it's kind of damned if you do,

damned if you don't situation in comment sections. Don't read the comments, Dirk.
[laughter]
Yeah, yeah, I can't resist at at at at at at that point. Um no, the the it's been generally positively received. I So which which kind of seems to support us in like, okay, this this was probably time to do it. Yeah. So these PEGI changes are for games moving forward and that I get that makes sense. You wouldn't expect companies to go back through their entire back catalog and start re-rating their titles. But obviously so many of the big games today, the ones that are being most played, are older games, have titles from previous years, those big ongoing live service titles. And most of them are rated according to what you're proposing. But how mindful are you of the fact that there might be some games out there that, you know, young people are playing, they're still active, they're still being updated, they're still being maintained, um but sort of don't currently don't have to adhere to these new rules. Or do they have to? Have I misunderstood that? Yeah. So, yeah, we

we did not include a lot of detail about legacy products because that's something we want to figure out properly and it it with with such a big change, it is actually a lot more complicated than you might think immediately. 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. Yeah. Which probably caused some confusion because we will be looking at some legacy products. We still have to figure out particular details, but ask any age rating board in the world and they'll go like, 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. Moreover, physical products tend to have a limited life cycle. I think what you're referring to is live service games. Mhm. And I think in the

discussion that we still need to have also with I guess the the the the industry is that leaving live service games that are legacy products entirely untouched would not work out well in the long term. Mhm. But we need to give ourselves the time to find the proper parameters. Because we introduced four new categories, you know, can we do all of them? You know, as you point out, there's lots of games out there and there is a lot of them are constantly being updated. We cannot continuously continue to check our back catalog, but Mhm. if you know that we've been tracking the presence of in-game purchases and paid random items for the last 7 years, that gives us a very interesting database to sort of see whether the criteria that we're now introducing for in game purchases and paid random items may not be applicable to live service games. It's different for that play by

appointment category where there's pressure to play. We have no information Mhm. which games from the past have certain mechanics like that. It would be in terms of resources incredibly difficult to go back and sort of go like would that game have this sort of thing? So, we'll probably have to make some really smart choices and then develop a plan of attack to indeed address uh some legacy products under the new criteria. Yep. I like the last two questions. He just like yep. Yeah. [laughter] nailed that. Yeah. Well, it's it's Ian Ian and and and and I discussed part of this Mhm. you know, [clears throat] as it just happens to be earlier this week and we're like ah, this turns out always to be a lot more complicated than we originally thought, but at least you know, if we're if we're given some time to do this and in these days it's like really difficult because everything changes, everything is online immediately. So, I hope people

won't be, you know, uh ringing our bells mid-June and sort of say, "Okay, are you done?" Because this is going to take most of the rest of the year for us to sort of get into. Yeah. A lot of focus is going to be on the loot box thing, but there had been measures put in place by companies, I think. And it's interesting one of the companies I spoke to said that some of the Well, you know, we just had the Brazil, you know, you just in Brazil you've got that new act that's gone into place which is around, you know, the age gating of stuff and you've obviously there's rules in Australia and companies are already having to adapt, you know, having to develop the tools, you know, the ability and you talked about one of the things you suggested, I think, was the ability to turn off by default the ability to purchase items, I think, which which would allow you to have a slightly lower PEGI rating. So, parents would have to physically turn those on. Now, a lot of games don't have I mean, I don't know if any game has that capability or stuff built in, but companies are now having to try and work those things out, right? And because they're having to work it out for maybe Australia or maybe for Brazil, that means once they've worked out for one of those countries or one of those rules,

they can roll that out to any of the others. Loot boxes got got the big focus. I understand why cuz it's obviously the big headline and stuff, but I was actually most fascinated by the play by appointment concept. I'll give you an example why I think this. So, I was interested in this Pocopia Pokémon Pocopia, the game that's just come out. It's a Peggy 3 game. It has this thing in it where if you log in every day, you get a stamp that you can get coins from. And there are daily challenges. And if you get five stamps in a week, you can get a big bonus amount of coins. Now, if I'm reading this right, under this new system, that'd be a Peggy 7, right? Yes. Yes, potentially. Obviously, we'd like to look at it and and examine it to to make a a full decision, but effectively, yeah. I mean, the idea around the kind of play by appointment categories uh 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. So, it's not them going, "Oh, hey, I really fancy playing the game today." It's "Oh, I have to go in and play it now cuz I want to get that reward or else I'm going to miss it." So, it's that draw back into the game where we're we're pushing the rating slightly higher. So, as you said, it's only going to go to a Peggy 7 for that. And obviously, we've got different categories at 12 where the situation's slightly different. But yeah, that sounds like it would be in the in the Peggy 7 camp for that one. Now, obviously, Pokémon requires a lot of reading. You know, I know it's a Peggy 3, but I don't know how many 3-year-olds are reading some of the contextual information in that anyway. But, as a parent, I kind of like it because Pocopia I This is a personal thing. Pocopia is a big game that my son can't put down. And I love E6. I love the fact he loves it. It's a great game. It's very wholesome. Um but the fact he wants to turn it on every morning to get a stamp. Yeah. That doesn't help me with my screen time management. Right. You know, and [laughter] it it for for my point that that's a little bit I don't

mind him playing it, but but at the same time Mario Run on mobile, that's a game that's also it's got a sort of a daily incentive. It's tied to a Nintendo account. You can get Nintendo points. But Mario Run is a 60-second game. He he's he can put that down a lot easier than he can a Pocopia. I'm not quite so concerned about that um because it's a daily incentive, but the play sessions are short. Whereas if it's a daily incentive, but he's going to play it for 5-6 hours, I'm I'm concerned about it. I'm not that I'd ever let him play for that long. But um uh but I think it's Animal Crossing to a degree is a bit like that. Animal Crossing shorter play sessions as well. Um yeah. I guess there's a lot of nuance Oh, yeah. to this area from a parental decision process, yeah. There would be so much nuance. And I think if we were going to try and bake in all of those degrees of separation into the criteria, I'm just imagining what the experts group meeting would [snorts] be like now for me saying, "Okay, well how long is acceptable to pull them back into the game for?" And then there would be a

2-hour long conversation about should it be 1 hour or 2 hours? And I think generally you just have to go with kind of the broad theme idea of what you want to get out of the question. And then like you say, it will have the correct descriptor, it'll get a seven, and hopefully that will interest the parents into reading more about it and finding out why cuz you can always go to our website and we'll describe why we it needed that descriptor and why it needed that age rating, and then hopefully you can decide from there. But yeah, you can you could get a bit crazy with it. And the the example that you gave with your kid was kind of exactly the sort of scenario that was discussed in in the experts group when we were looking at the boundaries of this criterion because you can you can go like, "Okay, what's the what's the academic literature on harmful impact of persuasive gaming effects?" And so on. And you'll find correlations, you'll never find, you know, hard evidence, but you can work on the basis of very specific scenarios.

And because the point of our system is to protect minors and to inform parents, the friction between those two is exactly where we want to be. And that the point of friction, but that I have to play this cuz otherwise I'm not getting a stamp is exactly the example that we, you know, sort of brought out as proof that play by appointment is a good basis for a criterion. It was also pointed out in in other committee conversations that this is also the the the stuff that a lot of people enjoy, that it it makes game fun and engaging, you know, like cliffhanger in a in a Netflix series and so on. So so be careful, which was sort of I guess where the compromise was found to not make it land in a very high age category, but the primary purpose here was to inform parents like, "Look, with that game you might have some uncomfortable conversations." Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Particularly my 6-year-old that does not come off games

very easily. Some of this stuff is is quite quite strong. I It's interesting I did like the be safe online game play element, but that's is that's not really a concern um for for the UK, is it? Because we're not allowed If your game's not being, you know, if there's no ability to if there's unrestricted communication and you can't um report things, there's no community standards, then that's generally in a lot of countries not allowed, right? No. That's the criterion that we kind of haven't devised for parents, but more for companies. Mhm. Cuz as you point out, that that stuff is, you know, con- uh platforms' terms and conditions tend to not allow this. Rules and regulations in a growing number of European countries won't allow this. So, ultimately, the PEGI 18 is going to be the least of their problems. But, we're like often the first station where a game developer from the Far East, you know, arrives when they want to release a game in Europe. And they may have this sort

of thing. And we can at that point inform them like, "Look, if you don't build in some safeguards, then, you know, the PEGI 18 is only the first thing in a long line of uh you know, deceptions that you're going to experience with your release in Europe." Um we we we have a similar approach with the discrimination descriptor. You You won't find You'd have to go back a long time in PEGI history to find a game that it effectively has the discrimination descriptor. And that's because the criterion literally describes what is considered to be illegal in many countries in Europe, namely encouraging hatred against different kinds of minorities. So, it's like often also a line in the sand like in Europe, that line we do not cross. And here is your first warning. Yeah. Ooh. A lot of the focus is going to be on in-game purchases and paid randomized items and and it was to loot boxes effectively. Have any sort of companies

concerned about the push back that you know, I was There's a lot of people pointing out that that makes EA Sports FC a from a three to a 16. Although, I do argue that I'm not sure why it's a three, you know? But, it's but it it it it's Have you had any sort of concerns around that? And cuz a lot of these companies they put they they are trying cuz of because of some of the, you know, the fresh social pressure and some of the legislative pressure they're already putting in place pro- things to try and restrict those to to older age groups. And the thing is you don't speak to companies, you speak to representatives of companies and those representatives have to talk with a lot of people within those companies and you know, different kinds of interests. So yes, obviously they come with concerns to these meetings because there are various impacts. But this was a matter of okay, you know, we're we started these conversations somewhere in September of last year after working for a couple of weeks on a on a on a proposal. Um

this is where we would like to land and and then it's it's sort of Harmonica style went in in different directions. Uh so yes, we we we got pushback and at the same time we got support as well. Um and one week it was different than the other week. Um but it was sort of making everybody see the bigger picture that made us get the buy-in that we needed to come out with this with this announcement. Yeah, I mean we've got a range of committees that are all kind of feeding into this during the process, one of which is the PEGI Council. And when you're proposing ages and going around the table, they will say, "Look, I I don't think that's going to work in our territory, you know, this is kind of the the mood of the situation, you know, it needs to be at a certain level if it's going to be accepted nationally by, you know, all the representative countries that involved in PEGI. And companies do pay close

attention to what our our experts and and the the the country representatives in the PEGI Council say. And because for them this is an important I would say assessment of whether what we are doing and what they're supporting is is right. Uh it's like being in the boring middle, I guess. We can't come out too radical, but we can't be coming out too soft, either. Like I said, maybe it's a little boring, but it if if you want to be productive, it's it's where you need to be. Do you anticipate age verification coming into games in Europe? Wait a minute. Where's my Where's my response here?
[laughter]
Where's your official Where's your Where's your one? Yeah, my my my statement. Um It's it's part of a debate that is still not fully mature yet, I would say.

There in in some territories and some topics, there is an eagerness, but I would also there caution against moving too quickly because it it may not be the silver bullet that some people think it is. Um As we said, we're we try to be as self-critical as we can be. So, when people say, "Oh, parents don't pay attention to Peggy and it's pointless and it's useless and it's not being adopted." Then, you know, we we're aware that not every parent is aware of us and not every parent that is aware of us follows us very strictly. That means we need to continue forever and ever and ever to educate our audience. It's going to be an never-ending PR and marketing effort. And we need everybody's help in doing this. And even then, we'll never reach 100%, but we have made great progress. Now, age verification or on the other end of the spectrum, a ban,

sort of pretend that they're a more foolproof situation, but even a ban is not going to be effective and age verification isn't going to amount to nothing if the parents don't buy into this. So, it's often portrayed as, "Oh, you are simply, you know, pushing the your responsibility onto the shoulders of parents. No, I'm simply saying that if you think you can do this without the parents, you're very, very mistaken. And and and so what we say is age verification and bans do not take enough into account that parents have to play an active role. Cuz if you keep kids away from things for many years and you don't uh stimulate a conversation with parents, what are you going to end up with when they're suddenly old enough? You know, they're not assertive, they're not informed that there is no been no there's been no education. So, you know, let's start this slowly let's start this

early and you can only do that by providing with as much information as you can. Yeah, I think the role of parents is an incredibly important one and you mentioned earlier on, you know, there are some 17-year-olds who'd be absolutely fine paying a PEGI 18-rated game. There'd be some 14-year-olds who could play a 16. We have to classify games for kind of like the child in the middle of the normal distribution curve. We can't make it perfect for everybody. That's where parents come in. Parents know their children best and at the end of the day we still want them to be able to make an informed decision and not have that decision abdicated away by technology. I think there's still a really important role there. Yeah, well, I Yeah, there's there's there's still, you know, when you say age verification, that's essentially sort of a 17 different potential scenarios and then I'm probably forgetting a dozen others. Because are you talking age verification

for purchase and download? Are you talking age verification for daily access? Are you talking age verification between 18+ and minors or PEGI 16 and PEGI 12 or Peggy 7 and Peggy 3. We you know, but we we haven't even gotten to that level of the conversation yet. And I in that sense I'm happy that there are some test cases happening not in Europe and not on video games that might show the difficulties with these. Is is age assurance going to be part of of of the future? Yes, I think, but I would be very cautious about sort of embracing or what it immediately. I think there are still enough questions about privacy and data protection which children have a right to as well to be to be solved. And technology isn't going to be the end-all solution to all of this, but it will play a role.

Is education not getting you? I know that games are getting far more complicated and some of these new classifications you've introduced highlight how complicated video games have got to compared to 20 years ago. But I'm obviously I've got two children. I've got a 6-year-old and a 3-year-old. But I grew up with video games. I know not to put Grand Theft Auto in front of them. My mom didn't. But but but I I I know I know this medium now. I know what a what the Peggy age rating means. Whereas whereas you know, I think perhaps some of these ideas that people don't pay attention to Peggy they don't pay attention to the age rating. That's probably true of some parents that don't care, but I I don't know how you can solve parents that don't care. But the but parents that do care I think there's an understanding now. I think when the 90s my my mom saw video games for toys, right? Cuz a lot of the time they were that's where you bought them. You bought them in Toys "R" Us. Um and and so the fact that GoldenEye had a six or whatever age rating it had and it didn't did
[laughter]
She didn't mind she didn't think about the fact that it was being played by somebody that perhaps shouldn't be

playing that game. Whereas I don't know if that's the quite the case anymore at least increasingly becoming the case anymore. I don't know how you found it. I know games are more complicated, so maybe it is still an education challenge. It's certainly not the vibe that we get when we do our research now. I mean, we're quite fortunate that PEGI has been around for so long. It used to obviously be the case that games ratings weren't necessarily seen in the same light as film ratings. Um but like you say, people our age have grown up with age ratings, grown up with PEGI ratings. Um and it's it's a familiar part of, you know, the the experience that they're playing games with their children. I think they now know what a PEGI 18 means and they associate that with something, whereas before probably wasn't necessarily the case. Mhm. Yeah, the annual survey we do when it comes to awareness does does kind of show that we've we've got a a solid base. But obviously the industry is is evolving very rapidly, so this comes with new

questions and concerns that, you know, you as a parent didn't have with your mom when you were a kid gamer. Yeah. So, that's why I said this is going to be a perpetual challenge to keep parents informed. For a couple of years we we've we've done these awareness studies and we we arrived at 80%. And I was like, yeah, but you can use those in in both directions. You can say great, four in five parents know what the PEGI labels are. Whereas somebody who hates us might say like, one in five parents don't know who PEGI is. How bad is that? So, we sneakily two three years ago slipped in a few other brands to sort of see how do we perform compared to other brands? And I know at that time we we we weren't allowed to make them public. Uh but we we checked it against Netflix and Facebook and other, you know, like not even they have 100% brand awareness. Which led me to sort of think, okay, so there's a percentage of people out there

that do not recognize the Netflix logo, don't know what Netflix is. Which brought me to sort of okay, I need to sort of step out of my bubble and also understand that there are people out there with enough problems in their lives to not be able to bother about what Netflix is. And I think that's obviously where we always will be to some degree vulnerable, which is, you know, vulnerable adults, vulnerable parents, parents in a difficult situation are the most difficult to reach, even though they would be best helped with this information. And and and that that conflict is, you know, is sometimes driving me crazy cuz I don't have a perfect solution for this other than work really hard and never give up trying. Yeah. Um Darko, you've kind of taken up too much of your time, but before I wrap up, is there any what's next then? So you you've you've hinted at I mean obviously it all gets implemented in

June and you've talked about some of the journeys you've got to go on with live service games which so that might be your answer, but what are your next priorities? Holidays. Holidays, yeah. [laughter] It's been a lot of work. We're having some time off now. Darko's been promising it for a while. I think from a practical perspective, we're obviously going to start getting the games in and we will be looking at them and assessing them and the next few months after June are going to be okay, let's see how we did with this classification criteria. Do we need to make some amendments? Because at the end of the day, we want to be putting out common sense age ratings. We don't want any kind of crazy outcomes. So it's about monitoring, seeing what's worked, seeing what hasn't worked, making those adjustments. Because this is a huge change. It's like absolutely massive change. Normally we'll bring in one, two new criteria year and it's about a special type of violence, but it's about making sure what we've done works and is and is practical going

forward for me anyway. Yeah, [snorts] that's true. And and for me it's it's sort of maybe anticipating too. There is sometimes tough controversy. If you zoom in on specific titles, you will find people that cheer because it got a high H rating and it's not even high enough and other people got it, but I love that game. And it it's also addressing the perception that we punish games with an H rating. I've seen this sometimes in headlines. PEGI punishes this game with an H rating. You go like, that's not the point at all. We we don't we're not even interested in what video game companies think of the ultimate result. It's about what is the correct information to bring to parents. That's our primary audience, not about what the impact is for a video game company, although their opinion counts as well. So, making sure indeed that we're you know, that Ian can come out with his team with uh decisions that are generally accepted.

Maybe not by all. There will always be some degree of controversy, uh but also to sort of see to what degree we can critically evaluate what we've done and maybe take her here and change a few things there under the hood. Cuz the H rating labels have never changed in in in the almost 25 years that we existed, but under the hood there's constantly been changes and that's probably going to be for us on the table in the next year um a little bit more than before because with new with with so many new criteria, there's a lot of maintenance work to go in that that will have to be done. Yeah, right. Well, thank you so much for your time, Dirk. I did enjoy your again of doing article on whether or not you're going to let your 15-year-old play Grand Theft Auto or not. I thought that was a
[laughter]
highly entertaining question. My son was less enthusiastic.
[laughter]
Uh dear, well, it's all right. The game's not coming out. It's fine. Um,
[laughter]
yeah, I mean, I I've put in an official request at Rockstar to postpone the game

until the 30th of August, 2029, and I haven't had a response yet, oddly enough. I'm sure I'm sure it's an option. Um, thank you, Ian. Thank you, Deck, for joining us. No worries. Thanks a lot. You're welcome. That's it for today's edition of The Game Business Show. Join us back next week for more interviews, news, and data. You can make sure you don't miss an episode by subscribing for free via our website, thegamebusiness.com. You can also pay to receive our bonus podcast and newsletter on Monday, as well. I do appreciate all the paying subscribers we've got. It keeps us going, so so thank you. But, that's it for today. Until next time. Thank you for tuning in.