More Oblivion Re-Rating Fallout

The ESRB has a retort to the criticism leveled against it after rating Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Mature. The move has required Bethesda Softworks to pull all of the current stock of the game to relabel. From the GameDailyBiz article: "When we brought the topless female images to Bethesda Softworks' attention, they confirmed that the art file existed in a fully rendered form in the code on the game disc. The ESRB's investigation found that the mod allowed users to change the filename for the female character mesh in order to access the art file that was created by Bethesda. While true that a modification was required to access this file, the changes we implemented last year - expanding our disclosure rules to include locked-out content - were made to prevent these kinds of situations" Via Cathode Tan, who has his own commentary, an opinion piece by John Romero has yet another view of the complicated situation.

Comments

Re:Does anyone know the background?

[westlake]

Games should be rated for violence, and graphic sex, but boobies that can't be seen without a hack? Holy fuck, what is wrong with parents?!

Mark Twain pulled the first American print run of Huckleberry Finn after an anonymous engraver made pornographic changes in an illustration. Huck Finn's Obscene Illustration

30,000 pages to be snipped and replaced. However crude or funny the in-jokes stay in-house.

The problem isn't prudery. The problem is in pushing the limits of the voluntary ratings system until it collapses and the government takes over. You want to introduce nudity and sex into your game? Fine. But do it openly under an M or AO rating. Don't hide behind the excuse that adult content is accessible only through a mod.