The Digital Rating Service that the Entertainment Software Rating Board...
The Digital Rating Service that the Entertainment Software Rating Board introduced Wednesday was designed to address the “explosion of game devices in the last couple of years” that brought with it a rise in digitally delivered games, ESRB President Patricia…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
Vance told us. Many such games haven’t used ESRB’s existing rating system that covers all packaged videogames. “We want to ensure that ESRB ratings are available to consumers for the games that they download and purchase, regardless of the device,” said Vance. ESRB has “had a very strong presence in the console world, and now we're really trying to encourage all developers to get an ESRB rating regardless of the platform they're publishing on and also make it really easy for other platforms that want to” use ESRB ratings, she said. The Digital Rating Service uses a “brief but detailed online questionnaire to assess not only a product’s content and age-appropriateness, but also interactive elements,” including sharing of personal info or physical locations and “exposure to unfiltered user-generated content,” ESRB said in a news release. The new, “streamlined” service is initially being used for downloadable games available for Xbox Live Arcade, the PlayStation Network, PS Vita, PlayStation Certified devices, Nintendo eShop and Windows 8, it said. Other digital content aggregators, online game networks, streaming and download services will follow at an unspecified time, it said. ESRB also eliminated the cost to developers for adding a rating to their games, it said. “The resulting ubiquity of ESRB ratings will ease a parent’s job by presenting a single ratings standard across the many platforms on which their children access games.” The Digital Rating Service complements the CTIA Mobile Application Rating System with ESRB, a program begun last year through which the board said it assigns ratings to mobile apps using a similar process (CD Nov 30 p17). The Digital Rating Service was “modeled after” that program, Vance told us.