Games which feature loot boxes will soon be given an age rating of 16 across Europe, including in the UK, under a host of changes by the European video game ratings organisation.
The new ratings, taking effect from June, could see games containing loot box systems, such as EA Sports FC, receive a much higher age rating.
The organisation’s changes to this system will see games containing “paid random items” branded PEGI 16 by default. It says in some cases this could rise to PEGI 18.
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How serious do they take the rating system in the UK? As often times most people tend to ignore it and let their kids play games that have a higher rating than they should be playing in the US.
Yes, but this is for paid loot boxes. Unless their kids have credit cards (and I bet they don ‘t) the people who will be doing the paying will be parents.
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Ah, most games with loot boxes are free go play these days, so parents don’t really need to worry about paying for anything. Unless the parents want it.
I know there’s a lot of parents who don’t properly setup parental controls and whose kids will just use the payment methods on the account without asking permission or even knowing what they’re doing.
That’s unfortunately true, it’s so easy to just set up your pass code for purchases and that should keep most kids from buying things without permission.
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I think parents are still learning how to parent in the digital age. There’s unfortunately also many who just don’t understand the full weight of what kids can do with these devices and don’t properly set up controls no matter how easy they are to manage. A parent that’s 40 right now and has a 10 year old they had a 30 would’ve been that same age (10) 30 years ago. These digital systems and Microtransactions didn’t really exist back then, and they’re still rapidly developing with companies finding new ways to influence their users to spend more and more.
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In that situation I think parents need to ask for help from friends or people that are in a position to do so.
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They should. The reality is that they won’t. It is a difficult balancing act between how much is the parents responsibility to keep their children safe, how much is the company’s responsibility to not knowingly use tactics that exploit minors, and how much is the government’s responsibility to regulate. Honestly, if I were a parent I just wouldn’t allow my kid to have their own digital device until they’re 15 minimum. Don’t give me that stress.
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Also 18 for communication in games that don’t have some kind of moderation/report option.
This is good. It won’t change much but these companies should be accountable.
I watched that awful interview of the CEO of Roblox and it made me think these companies have no clue what they are doing and don’t feel responsible for what people do on their platform.
My sis has tried to put parental controls on her kids phones and they just keep finding fun new ways to bypass most of it. On the other hand, she’s got the ability to remotely give them time to play Xbox when they ask for it, it automatically kicks them out of games when they run out of time - it feels like the controls there work better because it was designed as part of the system and not as aftermarket add on software.
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I guess parental controls work better on a closed ecosystem? I actually wonder now how Helix will handle that. Like I remember being in middle school and we had our school iPads. Someone would always find a way to an uncensored YouTube or how to download games not approved by the school. There’d even be kids jailbreaking their iPhone or iPads and offering to jailbreak others. If it’s possible to access windows without using dev mode or something overly complicated then that might be a nightmare for parents with kids who always find a way.
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