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Games with loot boxes to get minimum 16 age rating across Europe
- nba456_ 7mo agoI never understood why video game lootboxes get regulated while real-life lootboxes like pokemon cards don't.
- steele 7mo agoThis is the same argument Valve is presenting.
- gmadsen 7mo agoPhysicality. You don’t even own digital games, let alone cosmetics for your digital game license.
- rincebrain 7mo ago(Opinions my own, naturally.) I think they're right, really. Obviously you need to require enough friction that the experiences are comparable (e.g. no letting someone impulse buy 100 times in half a second without having to re-type their "I am an adult" payment info or something analogous, possibly just a hard ceiling for everyone), but I don't think you can ban everything that touches the same sharp edge, and you can't mandate that parents teach their kids how to handle it. So I think the best you can do is put hard limits on people's ability to hurt themselves without at least an "are you really sure" check, and maybe something like not allowing cash in the exchange without adult verification so the kids might, at worst, gamble their FunBux they earned playing a game and get burned on having lost a lot of FunBux, rather than their or their parents' cash. (This doesn't stop parents from giving their kids their credit card, but that's not really a problem you can solve...)
- saulapremium 7mo ago>I don't think you can ban everything that touches the same sharp edge Why not, though? Is this a general stance against banning anything, or do you think loot boxes, video games and/or kids are different?
- rincebrain 7mo agoI do, generally, think that banning (or legalizing) things in their entirety is often ineffective, and if you just make them entirely and equally illegal/legal you no longer have any levers to stop people making them as toxic as possible. (Look at how insanely pinpoint-targeted at addiction exploitation sports betting has become in the US, for example.) In this specific case, it's because I don't think you can whack-a-mole things that tickle the addictive feedback loops in people's brains everywhere faster than people can engineer their ways around it or find new ways to exploit things that do those same things without being caught in the laws, so I think you need to both: - raise the cost of making it too painful for people who aren't self-moderating enough and keep the most lethal edges off it (e.g. ceilings on how much you can spend, making you have to take active action that takes more than a few seconds so you can't impulse-click and blow a fortune on One More Hit, no feedback mechanisms that incentivize spending more when you already spent a lot...) - limit how harmful it can be to people who are too young and haven't yet learned what it does to them and that they need to be careful (e.g. use something like having access to a credit card you can input on request as a proxy for verifying you're an adult, and try to ensure any of the foam padded Kid Slot Machines(tm) can't be traded in a useful fashion for cash or paid for with cash, even with verification) In some sense, the original video games with this kind of feedback loop were arcade games - you got a variable amount of reward for your input token, and they had to give you enough to convince you to keep doing it. Microtransactions with lootboxes are just that feedback loop taken to the logical limit, but I don't necessarily think people who hate microtransactions would consider games like that as a similar evil, precisely because, like physical blind boxes, the quantization and scale is so much smaller, and it's so much higher friction to blow a fortune on it.
- Archit3ch 7mo agoGiven their track record with Artifact, I don't think we should listen to them on the topic.
- benoau 7mo agoBecause in real life the store clerk won't let a child spend $1000 on their parents card making purchases again and again and again and again and again, but a video game will let a child do it in less than an hour and consider that a success and try to understand how to stimulate another child to do so.
- MiiMe19 7mo agoWith the rise of online storefronts and employees who just don't care I beg to differ.
- nurettin 7mo agoDiffer all you want. No child will bankrupt a family at a trading card game store. These are physical goods paid in bulk with provisioning and there are laws for returning them. Another point of contention is the randomness of packs. The way you play is: You save up to buy the entire set of boosters and already get almost all cards you need for competitive or fun play. The rest you need to trade for or buy individually. It is much more of a social interaction than gambling. The value you get from saving up and trading is easily 10x what you get from opening boosters. That's why you will never see a bunch of kids queued up in front of a counter frothing from the mouth saying "just... one more!"
- hiccuphippo 7mo agoAllowing trading is a big part of it. Most online games never allow trading the things bought with real money, they get tied to your account. I guess as a way to prevent CC fraud but it still contributes to the issue.
- JasonADrury 7mo agoJust to be clear, the biggest problems are associated with games that allow trading.
- nurettin 7mo ago
- mikkupikku 7mo agoThose are gambling too, and were criticize as such not just now but also when they were new (but people ignored that criticism because pokemon was hype and adults complaining about trendy things are always uncool and ignored.)
- idiotsecant 7mo agoWhen you buy a pokemon card at least you get a card
- teeray 7mo agoThere’s something to be said about the visibility of gambling as a signal to people that someone may have a problem. Gambling on your phone just looks like being on your phone. It even improves access to the addiction. Needing to go to a casino looks a lot different, provides some friction, and could spur intervention. The same could be said about loot boxes vs buying Pokemon cards in a store.
- jayd16 7mo agoI will say card packs are somewhat useful for drafting formats where you need a sealed pack of random unknown cards. Just ripping packs hurts my soul. What a waste.
- djtango 7mo agoPokemon cards are addictive and fun but they're kind of analogue. Loot boxes are more like slot machines - they have flashing lights, animations and jingles to hook you in deeper. And because the lootboxes are in game they can be tuned in frequency and payout just right to keep you playing in a way boring cards could never be (beyond just boring probabilities)
- dietr1ch 7mo agoIdk about pokemon cards, but I'm sure the wotc guys use something to make sniffing newly opened packs addicting.
- TheAceOfHearts 7mo agoPokemon cards have gone full circle, GameStop now has an online service where you can gamble on cards digitally just like lootboxes. You buy a roll at different price points to win a PSA graded card from a set of probabilities, and then you can sell it back for 90% market value to GameStop or have them ship it to you. The proliferation of gambling over so many domains has radicalized me against it in a way that I didn't think would've been possible a few years ago.
- travisjungroth 7mo agoWoah, you can sell it back to them? That’s normally the line that isn’t crossed. You sell it at the store next door (pachinko) or on the open market (trading card games and digital items).
- riffraff 7mo ago> The proliferation of gambling over so many domains has radicalized me against it in a way that I didn't think would've been possible a few years ago. I grew up in Italy when sport betting was illegal and you had to do it through illegal channels, and I did it now and then like everyone else, and thought we should totally make it legal. At some point all betting, slot machines etc.. became legal and it's been a disaster and I'm also totally radicalized against it.
- rvnx 7mo agoThe best solution is through education. For example by showing in big letters the return-to-player ratio: On 100 EUR you will get → 79 back, if you put them again in the machine you will get → 62.41 → 49.30 → 38.95 → 30.77…
- mikkupikku 7mo agoJust trying to get normies to understand that slot machines aren't "hot" and "due" for a jackpot because nobody has won recently is virtually impossible. Stats class is hard and people don't really trust what they've learned anyway. A huge portion of the public even believes in such a thing as a person having "good luck". It's nonsensical, tantamount to believing the god of fortune is going to intercede on your behalf, but people really do think this way.
- EQmWgw87pw 7mo agoBecause neither loot boxes nor Pokémon cards are actually that addicting. There is no strong link to actual gambling and these mechanics. The reason loot boxes get regulated at all is because people simply don’t like them, and they scream the loudest for someone to fix it. Very bad precedent.
- philistine 7mo agoResale value protects The Pokémon Company. Your child spent all your money on Pokémon cards? Resell the cards. You've just realized your 15 years long obsession has broken your life? Resell the cards. Aggrieved parties can partly get restoration. That way there never is enough political momentum to legiferate them. Try to resell your Fortnite account and they close it.
- shevy-java 7mo agoReselling never recovers all costs, for most people. I know that because I sold many of my old magic cards when I stopped playing magic (due to lack of time). I recovered about 20% of my expenses at most.
- philistine 7mo agoWhich was enough to mollify you and make it impossible for you to think they should legiferate this mess.
- themafia 7mo agoThe single layer of abstraction. Pokemon cards have utility within the game of pokemon. They additionally have value in secondary market places which is not strictly tied to the rarity of the item. These markets are not required to exist for the game to function. Lootboxes, especially for competitive games, do not have any utility within the game and are often cosmetic. Their value is strictly tied to the rarity of the item which the vendor fully artificially controls. Absent the secondary markets the cases would not be purchased and the items ignored. So you have a choice. You can make pay to win items and publish the probabilities of actually winning them. Or you can have items that can't be traded. Otherwise you're trending very close to widely known regulated activity like gambling.
- seattle_spring 7mo agoRarity of Pokemon cards is also fully controlled by the vendor, and it's of course very intentional.
- themafia 7mo agoPokemon cards can get destroyed or may never enter the market for all the typical reasons or may not be particularly valuable even though they are rare. They don't have nearly as direct a control over the price.
- bsder 7mo agoTradeability. In real life you can just buy the card. That sets a hard upper limit to the losses. Whereas gacha games and lootboxes are notorious for unpublished, ridiculously bad odds for "desirable" things with no way to outright purchase them.
- yacin 7mo agoshould probably just ban gambling for children but seems like a good first step.
- mikkupikku 7mo agoDo they let 16 year olds gamble in casinos in Europe? Odd to ban it for kids but only some kids.
- idiotsecant 7mo agoPretty much all of Europe is 18-21.
- pdpi 7mo agoIf you're forbidding people from doing things they could do yesterday, it's best to be a little conservative with your scope. 16-yo kids might do some amount of part time work, and should at least have enough of a concept of money to understand why pressing the "more loot boxes" button is a Bad Idea. They're also old enough that they might potentially have their own bank account and their own card, which then caps the damages to their allowance.
- charcircuit 7mo agoThat would require extra work to pass more legislation which has a chance to fail. I think it's better to do it all once instead of having to revisit the issue every couple years.
- tjpnz 7mo agoSo what's the issue then? The minimum is 16 - or are you proposing kids 15 and younger have the right to gamble?
- kulahan 7mo agoIt’s not like if it fails, you’re forbidden from trying again, yeah? Or am I incorrect on this? Not European.
- ffsm8 7mo agoYou can still buy mystery boxes etc in brick and mortar stores. Most of these are targeted at <= 10 yo I strongly believe that this is mostly performative, honestly
- hsuduebc2 7mo agoOk, so we all agreed that it is gambling. But for some reason we let kids gamble but only after they reach sixteen? This feels weird.
- tjpnz 7mo agoBrain development of a 16 year old is at least further along than a 13 year old.
- hsuduebc2 7mo agoWell ok, but why they do not allow them other type of gambling. This is not "child gambling". It's just gambling.
- Twirrim 7mo agoI guess it's not gambling, or it'd be covered by the UKs existing laws around gambling that set the minimum age to 18. edit: I'm pointing out the UK has apparently decided lootboxes are not gambling, because if they did classify it as gambling it'd be covered by existing gambling laws that restrict it to 18+. Not that I personally hold that opinion, though I can see how I could have phrased my original message better. It's a stupid decision by the government, they should be 18+ and recognised for being gambling.
- Razengan 7mo ago> I'm pointing out the UK has apparently decided lootboxes are not gambling Wow, considering how the UK has been going full Taliban on everything why stop at lootboxes? Guess the politicians are getting some money/bribes from the lootbox companies.
- alexfoo 7mo agoThere's a nuance here. Consider these two positions that both mean that the UK Government does not currently recognise lootboxes as a form of gambling: A: The UK Government has decided that lootboxes are not gambling. B: The UK government has not decided whether lootboxes are gambling or not. The current situation is a lot closer to B than A. The UK Government has decided not to extend the existing Gambling laws to cover video game loot boxes. The existing laws did not automatically cover them, so a decision has to be made whether to amend the laws or not. Instead it has asked the industry to self-regulate. In 2022 there was a review that asked for improvements, restricting some access and mandatory spending controls. There have been other reviews and studies. It seems quite clear that the industry is not doing enough (no surprise, it's a cash cow for them) so it's likely to mean the Government will crank up the legislation to force their hand, but the wheels of Government move slowly; way too slowly for many people who have been affected by this.
- erxam 7mo agoOkay? How will this actually change anything? I don't think I have ever paid attention to a single age rating in my entire life. Does anyone do outside of fundamentalist parents who wouldn't let kids play most video games anyways? Very spiritually European move. What regulators should do is focus on easily applicable percentage-based fines. Make sure it's not just another line item.
- cortesoft 7mo agoWell, this is going along with all the new requirements for companies to actually verify ages, so it won't be up to the parents.
- edelbitter 7mo agoThis is not a regulators move. This is the industry slightly adjusting their recommendations to parents. Will this change anything? Maybe it will help the industry avoid being targeted by actual regulation.
- DanielBryars 7mo agoHaving age ratings is useful so I dont have to play a game to know its age suitability. Its common for very young children to play games, and age ratings help parents make informed responsible decisions. There are some dark addictive patterns being used in gaming such as changing the odds of reward to optimise engagement (and make money) - these patterns need an age rating. Additionally, I think age ratings encourage developers to avoid content which would increase the age rating, since they then target a wider audience.
- kelnos 7mo ago> I don't think I have ever paid attention to a single age rating in my entire life. You mean when you've selected games for yourself to play? That's... fine. If you mean when you've selected (or allowed) games for your kids to play, that's... pretty irresponsible.
- debesyla 7mo agoWe won't know until we try it. This law in worst case doesn't cause any problems and in best case solve problems. So win-win.
- hedora 7mo agoI wish they'd add mandatory labeling. I'm over 16 and have no interest in games with loot boxes.
- koshergweilo 7mo agoI feel like labeling is probably the best approach here. While I personally hate the business model of "Gatcha" type games and wouldn't mind if we banned lot boxes, it is a model does seem to work for a lot of people. I also think the odds should also be not only disclosed, but made prominent
- blell 7mo agoConsider using Google.
- mrweasel 7mo agoLabeling and filtering. It's much the same for various app stores. Just let me filter for "In-app purchase", if you have that, I'm not interested anyway.
- rkagerer 7mo agoLoot boxes are an in-game feature allowing players to buy random mystery items with real or virtual currency That's not how I use the term. I think of a loot box as a treasure chest or similar that you discover while exploring which, when opened, gives you some loot! On the other hand if you're talking about a package with a random assortment of stuff in it that you buy without knowing what's inside, I call that a "grab bag" or "mystery bundle". Am I too old? What games were primarily responsible for changing the vocabulary?
- zeta0134 7mo agoI started seeing this term come up everywhere when Overwatch first released. The common usage is much closer to mystery bundles as you describe, and regulators tend to be upset about them when real money gets involved. It feels an awful lot like gambling at that point.
- jcranmer 7mo agoThe term "loot box" has, since I want to say the early 2010s, referred to the mechanic described in the quote. It's hard for me to say what the earliest games were to create this mechanic, especially since its origin seems not to be in the traditional Western games but in East Asian games. The model is very strongly associated with the rise of "live service" gaming, with Overwatch and Battlefield being some of the more notorious offenders.
- delta_p_delta_x 7mo agoI was under the impression Eastern games preferred the loan word 'gacha'.
- debugnik 7mo agoYes, but they're the same mechanic really, so the earliest popular "loot box" game is probably some gacha game.
- shoxidizer 7mo agoThe purchases are purposely similar to previous examples of gameplay in design and language.
- newzino 7mo ago[dead]
- otikik 7mo agoI think this is good, but also it will change things very little (parents will skip the age verification screen).
- isodev 7mo agoIt’s not for technology to replace parents in their responsibilities to teach their kids how to cope with stuff of life. Age ratings are an aid but still require passing good habits and developing your child’s ability to think and solve this for themselves. So not letting your kids get addicted to in-app purchases sounds like good parenting. Keeping your kids away from tablets and smartphones until they’re 16 is even better parenting.
- kelnos 7mo agoWhich, frankly, is fine. Regulations like this are great to help guide parents, but ultimately it is the parent's responsibility to decide what is fine and not fine for their child. I wouldn't agree with a parent that gets their kid into loot boxes, but that's their choice. And if a parent is blindly skipping an age verification screen for their kid without figuring out why that age verification is there in the first place, then they're a bad parent. You can't really fix that, unfortunately, outside of extreme cases.
- hdgvhicv 7mo agoIt’s in the companies interest to make the age verification screen as annoying as companies make cookie pop ups - to just get the parents to click “yes whatever” all the time.
- Razengan 7mo agoYet again more moves which take away the liberty of all citizens and users instead of restricting predatory companies and products.. How much access to money parents want to give their kids is up to the parents. What people do with their own money, including kids, is up to the people. WHY are countries not enacting laws that punish companies for once? Say something like: • "After 3-5 purchases of the same item with random contents the buyer should get the content they specifically want." • "No item with random contents should cost more than N $\€" • "Buyers should have N-M hours to get a refund for an item with random contents" That way you could keep the "fun" and spirit of gambling without its destructive spiral and stuff
- Agentlien 7mo agoHow does an age recommendation take away liberties? I have kids and as a parent I use these ratings as a very loose guide combined with my own experience and understanding of the game in question. Other parents ignore them completely. I agree more could be done to directly affect the companies, and there have been a lot of legal cases surrounding loot boxes aimed at children. But this is a good complement to that. It makes it easier for parents to get aware of the issue.
- shevy-java 7mo ago> How does an age recommendation take away liberties? For instance, by being used in further legislation to mandate age verification on all operating systems. Lo and behold, that is already happening - see California. One can not view a single law and assume it is isolated, when in reality this is a move by lobbyists to further restrict people and sniff after them (see MidnightBSD giving in and adding a daemon that sniffs for user data; I am 100% certain systemd on Linux will follow suit, via a new systemd-sniffy daemon). Some companies pay good money for such legislation. So the answer to your question is very simple, actually. You just should not view it as an isolated way while ignoring everything else - lobbyists are sneaky. It reminds me of Google claiming it has no problem with ad-blockers, then they went on to destroy ublock origin (https://ublockorigin.com/ https://ublockorigin.com/).
- shevy-java 7mo agoI do understand the rationale; and I have known kids who were addicted to gaming. So I don't disagree that this kind of addiction-mechanism in games, is somewhat similar to e. g. casino gambling where some people get hooked up and may be unable to exit that addiction, leading to massive loss. People are different - some are very easy to addict. Others have strategies against that. My simple strategy was to never start gambling - and never pay for playing a game (aside from the initial purchase, but the last game I bought was in the 1990s; back then games were IMO better too, ignoring the graphics). Having said that, though, when I also combine this news with the attempt to force operating systems into sniffing for my age at all times, I am still totally against this. This kind of over-eager bureaucracy is not good. It reminds me of attempts to prohibit alcohol. Yes, it is not the same, a loot box does not cause physical symptoms really, compared to alcohol or, say, harder drugs - but states seem too eager to want to restrict people. Or monitor them, such as in the case of "age verification". So now this legislation is another basis to support mandatory age sniffing of everyone. So I am completely against it now.
- pixl97 7mo agoSee the fun thing here is we have fought doing anything at all for so long that the average voter will go with a totally authoritarian system to get anything done at all. This 'gambling' in games should have been headstompped under the law decades ago, but has instead grown into a huge ravening monster buying every politician it can. Every time you say we can't do anything about said monster you ensure that whatever happens will be extreme.
- tasuki 7mo agoThat's mild. I'd ban them outright.
- tehwebguy 7mo agoRight, it’s a scam and age gating them just fuels age verification.
- aboardRat4 7mo ago[flagged]
- messe 7mo agoYeah, kids should be able to wander into bookies and place bets as they please. Let's let them buy cigarettes too while we're at it.
- aboardRat4 7mo agoI don't know, maybe I'm an old fart, but I hadn't held a sum of money large enough to buy a pack of cigarettes until I turned 16. I presume my parent knew what they were doing, so, yeah, nanny state.
- freehorse 7mo agoRegulating gambling is not "nanny state", esp in relation to kids. Your personal experience as a kid, about whether you had money or not, is completely irrelevant as an argument.
- aboardRat4 7mo agoNot at all. My experience in this case indicates that there is a correct behavioural pattern which avoids the issue entirely and requires zero government's intervention. But if you insist on having a regulation, okay, I'm fine with it. What about the following regulation: each time a minor is found gambling or smoking, his/her parents are fined 100x times the stake/the price of cigarettes?
- throaway197512 7mo agoSo now you've made it impossible to actually stop a child from smoking. They're free to smoke as much as they want, because it's the parents that get punished, not them. And regardless of who gets punished, the fact remains, they can go to the store and buy cigarettes. You really think not being given money by parents is going to stop kids from accessing smokes?
- ChrisNorstrom 7mo agoLoot Boxes are like Pokemon cards, you buy a pack, don't know what you're going to get, and then you can trade or sell them. Banning this is just preventing kids from developing a proper risk/reward instinct later in life.
- PunchyHamster 7mo agoVast majority of those games don't allow trading or selling the things you got from lootboxes. And "learning" about gambling doesn't need to happen at 8 years old. What a fucking delusional view
- alpaca128 7mo agoYou can not trade or sell the contents of lootboxes.
- Bender 7mo agoIn steam marketplace one can. They are going to court with New York City right now over this. [1] [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_waOkwIpWxg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_waOkwIpWxg [video][18m]
- haritha-j 7mo agoYeah we should just let 8 year olds into casinos to help them develop their risk reward instinct. Also, the risk reward instinct doesn't work as well when you're gambling moeny someone else earned.
- hofrogs 7mo ago"Lootboxes", "cases", "packs" and other chance-based systems that involve spending real money or an in-game currency that could be obtained by spending real money should be banned completely, all of those systems exploit brain vulnerabilities for profit. Also, prediction markets, sports betting, online casinos, shitcoin exchanges.
- chrisjj 7mo agoBrain vulnerabilities? So ban alcoholic drinks and thrill rides too?
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- hofrogs 7mo agoThrill rides? Probably not, I don't think there are many people having their life ruined by their addiction to amusement parks. Alcoholic drinks? History of bans like that suggests that it's not a good idea. However that doesn't mean that nothing can be done. Addictions to alcohol, drugs, smoking, gambling damage both the person suffering from them and the friends/loved ones around that person. It is most likely impossible to drive the harm down to 0, but it can be reduced by denormalizing casual alcohol intake and sitations where people are peer pressured into consuming alcohol to fit in (especially in young adults), etc. People addicted to those substances/behaviors need a safe environment, a society that won't prompt them to relapse over and over because everyone around them is a casual user. Those are my thoughts, but I'm no expert.
- technothrasher 7mo agoHmm, so why do your perfectly reasonable thoughts on how to reduce alcohol abuse in light of not being able to simply ban it not apply to loot boxes as well? How is it different such that "completely banning", as you suggested, is a good idea there where it isn't for alcohol, drugs, smoking, and gambling (of which loot boxes are clearly a subcategory)?
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- d0d00 7mo agoWatch how fast they use this to further the extent of mandatory age verification online. That's what they usually do (read: the Shock Doctrine from Naomi Klein). Problem arises, create legislation (likely reducing freedom or increasing surveillance), use said legislation down the line after everybody forgets about it to further whatever their agenda is.
- pixl97 7mo agoNever let a good crisis go to waste. This said the gambling bullshit is going way too far and has it's own set of consequences in society. Remember, every time you act like an asshole to maximize the amount of money you can rip off of others, you invite an authoritarian takeover when the average person in society gets tired of your bullshit.
- WhyNotHugo 7mo agoI question whether it's not more reasonable to outright ban this kind of disguised gambling rather than start normalising "age checks" online.
- abbadadda 7mo agoGreat. Now do Roblox. In the game "Steal a Brainrot" the kinds of things kids can spend money on in the game that's supposedly safe for seven-year-olds is disgusting. £29.99 for a "secret lucky block" - and that's BEFORE price discrimination. Literally wiring the brains of kids as early as possible to have a tendency/preference towards "random variance rewards." I am really pleased to see any government doing something about this and protecting kids from this disgusting, predatory, and exploitative behavior. By all means game developers deserve to make a living... However, if they're going to operate a casino, they should be treated and licensed as such.
- lucketone 7mo agoTechnically: It’s not a casino if house wins 100% of the time.
- tsoukase 7mo agoI hope Roblox is banned for my 10 and 9 year olds including their peers, so that I can enforce it. I am glad I managed to refuse them a 1.99 payment until now while other parents allow whole 20s. After ruining their time and brain now they want to steal from them, adding insult to the injury. Please, Ursula, ban them as soon as possible.
- Zopieux 7mo agoGreat first step. Thanks EU for yet another concrete consumer W!
- PeterStuer 7mo agoTbh, pokemon cards were already banned over here in many primary school playgrounds 20 years ago. Not because of "gambling", but because rule disputes and outright theft started too many teen fisticuffs.
- Paianni 7mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pok%C3%A9mon#Reaction_to_Pok%C3%A9mania_(1999%E2%80%932000) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pok%C3%A9mon#Reaction_to_Pok%C...
- rldjbpin 7mo agoto the dozens who use the rating system as a deciding factor for getting games for their kids, i suppose this will help. meanwhile, one of the game that would have been affected by it, Counter-Strike 2, is already rated M by ESRB [1]. it is undergoing a major case in NY as we speak, and there are many professional players, also recognized by the devs, that openly stated they played the game since their early teens. [2] it does mean that a lot of more suitable games for younger audience, such as the sports title released every year. but a lot of them already have free titles with pay-to-win mechanics. i wonder if the enforcement would really differ any more than it currently is. [1] https://www.esrb.org/ratings/9406/counter-strike/ https://www.esrb.org/ratings/9406/counter-strike/ [2] https://www.hltv.org/player/19230/m0NESY https://www.hltv.org/player/19230/m0NESY