The “harm”? Litigation $$$ paid to parents of 10 year olds playing Cyberpunk, all it is, really. ESRB covering their butts because they know the rating system is, and always has been, as useless as the parental advisory stickers on CD cases. Parents don’t know it exists, retailers don’t care as long as they get their money, and devs/publishers only care about it as something to point to in order to avoid censorship while they blatantly market games like Cyberpunk to 10 year olds knowing that parents will buy it for them if the kid nags them enough or the kids themselves will buy it from some teenager working at GameStop who’s getting paid too little to care, or they’ll just lie about their age on Steam and use their parents’ credit card to buy it. This is just about the worst way to cover their butts, though.
I agree. This is just recycled Tipper Gore fearmongering by a company trying to make money by pushing the industry to adopt a technology they get to license.
I don’t know if any cases where a software company has been sued over this kind of thing. As far as I know, it’s entirely voluntary and done primarily for optics. My concern is that the industry - from the software production shops to the retailers - have a defense that they’re using industry accepted best practices for controlling access. If snake oil gets accepted as a “best practice” by popular acclaim - especially if the “harm” is an unjustifiable and unquantifiable feeling - I think it will distort the market.
To be clear, my face would get a “why the fuck are you still playing games, old man?” response rather than asking me to get my parents’ permission. And I absolutely am far more concerned about our ecological suicide, the destruction of our civil rights, and creeping authoritarianism around the world. This is a grift that, in the larger scope of things, amounts to an ingrown hair on a patient with pancreatic cancer.
What I’m saying is that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t roll our eyes at it before moving on.
The “harm”? Litigation $$$ paid to parents of 10 year olds playing Cyberpunk, all it is, really. ESRB covering their butts because they know the rating system is, and always has been, as useless as the parental advisory stickers on CD cases. Parents don’t know it exists, retailers don’t care as long as they get their money, and devs/publishers only care about it as something to point to in order to avoid censorship while they blatantly market games like Cyberpunk to 10 year olds knowing that parents will buy it for them if the kid nags them enough or the kids themselves will buy it from some teenager working at GameStop who’s getting paid too little to care, or they’ll just lie about their age on Steam and use their parents’ credit card to buy it. This is just about the worst way to cover their butts, though.
I agree. This is just recycled Tipper Gore fearmongering by a company trying to make money by pushing the industry to adopt a technology they get to license.
I don’t know if any cases where a software company has been sued over this kind of thing. As far as I know, it’s entirely voluntary and done primarily for optics. My concern is that the industry - from the software production shops to the retailers - have a defense that they’re using industry accepted best practices for controlling access. If snake oil gets accepted as a “best practice” by popular acclaim - especially if the “harm” is an unjustifiable and unquantifiable feeling - I think it will distort the market.
To be clear, my face would get a “why the fuck are you still playing games, old man?” response rather than asking me to get my parents’ permission. And I absolutely am far more concerned about our ecological suicide, the destruction of our civil rights, and creeping authoritarianism around the world. This is a grift that, in the larger scope of things, amounts to an ingrown hair on a patient with pancreatic cancer.
What I’m saying is that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t roll our eyes at it before moving on.