Friday, January 18, 2013

Mandatory ESRB or How to kill Indie Games


H. R. 287

The video game industry years ago in response to violent video game claims founded the ESRB itself to regulate itself and has done a damned good job of it. While not mandatory any AAA title will have an ESRB rating on it. However this law being passed would require EVERY game to have a rating. This means if I make a game in my spare time and decide to sell it, this game now has to have an ESRB rating which I have to pay for before I can sell my game. The only thing this law would accomplish would be to kill the indie game market, that's it.

Everything else in this bill is already being done, it is already illegal for stores to sell M rated titles to minors, there are already fines in place for those that do. Retailers are already required to display the ratings of games, which is why that nice little ESRB sticker is there. This bill would make it impossible for indie developers to sell their game.

Loved "Minecraft", "Super Meat Boy", "FTL", "Binding of Issac"? Yup all of those would have been affected by this bill and possibly would have never seen the light of day. Have a game that you backed on kickstarter that isn't a AAA title, well that kickstarter would have to include the cost of an ESRB rating now and because of that may not make its goal.

This bill would have a terrible impact on the gaming industry and those struggling to both get in and those trying to make a living by making games.