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ESRB Demands Hidden Content Review
Gamasutra is reporting that the ESRB is now mandating an audit of hidden game content. The audit is retroactive to the 1st of this month. From the article: "Fully disclosing hidden content accessible as Easter eggs and via cheat codes has always been part of ESRB's explicitly stated requirements when submitting games to be rated. In the July 20 public announcement, which focused on the revocation of a specific game's rating assignment, we formally stated that any pertinent content shipped on the game disc that may be relevant to a rating must be disclosed to ESRB, even if it is not intended to ever be accessed during game play."
This is just a publicity stunt. They're doing it solely so they can look good and say that they've done something the politicians will like. There's no way they can actually enforce this.
They can and will enforce it. Do you know why? Because the ESRB is comprised of the game publishers. This is the fact that people sometimes seem to forget. It is not an agency outside the industry. It is the industry, literally. The ESRB was created because the industry wanted to self-police and avoid government intervention; the alternative to the ESRB is not nothing, it's a government agency like the FCC overseeing video games. Which would you rather have to deal with?
The ESRB can and does routinely hand out fines to member companies. From what I remember from my time in the industry, fines start at $10,000 and go up from there. Most of these fines are not publicized because they're for procedural things like answering ESRB requests later than promised. There's no question of whether or not the fines will be paid; the fines will be paid or the publisher loses membership in the ESRB. No membership, no ratings; no ratings, no sales at stores like Wal-Mart, Gamestop or EB.
Regardless, this is nothing different than what the ESRB's stated policy has always been. They're just reiterating it because obviously a few publishers didn't quite get it. Publishers are required to submit the most prurient content for review. There's no qualifier saying "the most prurient playable content". Whether it's supposed to be playable or not doesn't matter. The ESRB has been saying this all along through the whole Hot Coffee thing; it's not as if they don't know about easter eggs or hidden content. It's not as if the publishers can pull a fast one on their own industry group. The rules have always been pretty clear.
I guess what I'm saying is sheesh people, everybody calm down. This is what you want to have happen; the industry policing itself, and enforcing its own rules. This is the way you keep people like Hillary Clinton from writing laws saying the ESRB is ineffective and therefore the government needs to step in and assume its role.