Rockstar Fights Back Against BBFC

Rockstar has launched its appeal against Manhunt 2's rating rejection in the UK. At the first hearing on the matter, Rockstar representative Geoffrey Robertson took the British Board of Film Classification to task: "Robertson went on to accuse the BBFC of being 'simply ignorant of the gaming experience' and 'throwing adjectives with hyperbolic abandon at the game ... Their reputation is not at stake; if it were we could show how, over the last century, they've been derided for some of the most stupid decisions in censorship history ... But we're not going to go down that road.'"

Comments

Re:"Their reputation is not at stake"

[Sigma 7]

Smooth, frankly, after rockstar got caught lying to the ratings boards with GTA:VC, Citation needed. In particular, there's no way you can reach the hidden content without attempting to mod the game - and furthermore, the rating change was from 17+ to 18+ (one year.) Just remember that the ESRB at the time did not factor game modifications into account even if it was a minor 1 byte change in a file that's not easily modified.

Oblivion was also re-rated by the ESRB as well, with the 'T'een rating changed to 'M'ature. The developer's response claimed that they already advised the ESRB on the violent content (although they disagree that red pixels and "inaccessible" content should bump a rating from 'T' to 'M'.)