ESRB Eyeballing Ratings For iPhone Games

Kotaku reports that the ESRB is thinking about expanding their game ratings to include games sold on the App Store. They realize that evaluating every single game is not feasible, but they may still be underestimating the amount of work they'd be taking on, and it could negatively affect some developers. Quoting: "'ESRB has seen increases in rating submissions each year since its founding and has always been able to keep pace,' the ESRB's Eliot Mizrachi told us. 'We have rated more than 70 mobile games to date and will undoubtedly rate more in the future as the market grows.' Seventy? Over the past, what, four or five years? It's a piddling number when you think of the hundreds of games available through the App Store. Further, many of them are mobile adjuncts to console releases, a different sort of beast from iPhone games. Not all of those need or deserve a rating; but if Apple brings in the ESRB to rate games, with the idea that it'll help parents control what their kids buy for their iPods, then unrated games are likely to be blocked by such filters. The incentive would definitely be there to get a game rated. And what of the cost? Getting a game rated isn't a free service; the ESRB levies a fee that covers the cost of looking through the code and rating the game."

Comments

Think of the children!

[Locke2005]

This is to protect all those young, impressionable minds out there that can afford a $400 phone and $100 a month for 3G service! Seriously, if a kid has one of these, he has more important things to worry about than "mature" elements in the games. Like getting mugged for this very expensive piece of hardware for instance. Won't somebody think of the children, and not load them up with this expensive shit that is just an invitation for them to get jacked?