Is the PEGI system killing the EU games market?

For those of you not in the EU you probably don’t know what PEGI is, so I’ll give you a brief breakdown, lifted from wikipedia:

Pan European Game Information (PEGI) is a European video game content rating system established to help European consumers make informed decisions on buying computer games with logos on games’ boxes. It was developed by the Interactive Software Federation of Europe (ISFE) and came into use in April 2003; it replaced many national age rating systems with a single European system. The PEGI system is now used in more than thirty countries and is based on a code of conduct, a set of rules to which every publisher using the PEGI system is contractually committed. PEGI self-regulation is composed by five age categories and eight content descriptors that advise the suitability and content of a game for a certain age range based on the games content.The age rating is not intended to indicate the difficulty of the game or the skill required to play it.

On the surface the PEGI system sounds and works well, a unified EU wide rating system means that games only have to be rated once and then released; rather than having to get accreditation in each country. You would think that the system would actually benefit the games industry, and for a while it did just that.

However with the rise of digital downloads PEGI has become one of the major roadblocks that slows down releases in the EU.

A prime example would be the recently released Class of Heroes 2, a JRPG  i was greatly looking forward to playing.  However, while the game has seen its US release, those of us in the EU have been left in the lurch.  Originally i have to admit to being rather angry at the developers, believing it was their fault, which sometimes it is; just not this time.

class328

Over on the US PS Blog where i commented on the lack of a EU release i had a reply from one of the dev.’s over at Gaijin Works:

+ Victor Ireland on June 4th, 2013 at 11:52 am said:

It’s coming to EU, but no PEGI rating or SCEE slotting yet. I would say late Summer is a pretty safe bet. We’re going to try to get the release of CoH3 between NA and the EU tighter, but it would help if PEGI got into the 21st century and had electronic submission instead of requiring paper hardcopies.

Now, Victor says there’s two things holding up the line here, PEGI and SCEE. Sony owns SCEE so that’s on their head. However the PEGI comment made me do a double take, especially with recent changes to the laws in the UK regarding PEGI.  I also wrote to several other indie developers who all said the same things, PEGI is an old toothless dog that should be put out to pasture.

Why do i say PEGI is a toothless old dog? Because no one listens or adheres to it that’s why. PEGI is a great system on paper, the problem is no one, other than the developers, pays attention to it. I worked for Game for a while and saw it first hand, kids of 10 years old buying an 18 rated game, our instructions were to never question them.  We even had parents buying 18 rated games for their 11 year old. This is something that happens all over, not just in Game, but in pretty much every retailer out there.

What makes the matter worse is that, despite it being a law in the UK, it’s not enforced. We get loads of sting operations for tobacco and booze, where the shops get heavily penalised and even jail time. Yet for PEGI enforcement there’s nothing, sure on paper there’s penalties, but there’s no enforcement.

PEGI in and of itself wouldn’t be so bad if the process was simple, and brought up to the modern day. For indie dev.’s that would include allowing them to send in their games via digital. Yet for some reason PEGI still requires them to send in a physical copy of their game, which is needless expense and wasted time.

For dev.’s that focus mainly on digital distribution physical copies are dead. Sending things through normal mail is either time consuming or expensive, especially if the Dev. is US based. Shipping stuff from there to the UK either takes time (usually around 8weeks through slow mail) or really expensive when shipped via courier. Either way it takes time for the delivery, more time for them to process and respond. Then more time and costs if the dev.’s need to resubmit for some reason.

For a indie dev.’s these costs can be crippling which is why they avoid releasing in the EU, unless they’re EU based. However even then the time lost can result in as much as 6months between the US and EU release. Class of Heroes is a prime example, the game was released in the US at the end of June, but it’s looking like a September/October release for the EU; that’s a 3 to 4 month delay. In a word this is UNACCEPTABLE, it’s time for either a new rating system that’s enforced, as well as being up to date and easy for the dev.’s to use and access. Or just scrap it all together and start from scratch. The other issue about PEGI is that despite it being enshrined in law in many EU countries (such as the UK) it’s actually a self regulated organisation. Self regulation for something like this is a bad idea.