ESRB attempting to kill Indie retail games?

PolyHertz

Thought this was interesting: twitter.com/LimitedRunGames/status/925447909725917184

Seems the ESRB changed its pricing policies recently and as a result smaller run retail indie games have become less viable. There's been some speculation on gaming forums that the ESA may have pushed for this to get more Indie studios to turn to big publishers. Either way, doesn't sound good.

ZacD

I hate the ESRB and MPAA, and the self censorship it causes. Also add another artificial barrier to entry for smaller developers.

Zack Maxwell

Holy crap, that's dark.

So the ESRB was allowed to just say "anyone who wants to release a game on physical disk needs to have a rating from us, and pay us a massive fee to get it".

This may only affect a small subsection of developers. But if the ESRB is willing to do something so malicious, I don't know of anything stopping them from hitting digital downloads later.

I feel like they've definitely outlived any usefulness.

ExcessiveZero

Grimwolf said:

Holy crap, that's dark.

So the ESRB was allowed to just say "anyone who wants to release a game on physical disk needs to have a rating from us, and pay us a massive fee to get it".

This may only affect a small subsection of developers. But if the ESRB is willing to do something so malicious, I don't know of anything stopping them from hitting digital downloads later.

I feel like they've definitely outlived any usefulness.

I do wonder if you could circumvent that by releasing on USB sticks, they have become increasingly cheap 

Zack Maxwell

They're operating themselves like a business that also has control over law enforcement.

Imagine if EA were allowed to say that any developers who signed on to a different publisher or went independent would face criminal fines and have their stuff taken down.

That's fucked up, right?

Marshkin

The challenge is that Age ratings groups work with federal governments to define what can and cannot be displayed in most stores. (Disc or USB drive wouldn't matter).
Some countries the only place where you can sell unrated games are the same places where you can sell Adult only games (Adult stores mostly).
So for selling physical copies, this becomes a nightmare.
That said, digital distribution changes this a lot. While it is limiting for an indy title to only digitally distribute, as far as I am aware, they can do so without any age rating.

Justin Meisse

It's concerning but I also haven't shipped a physical game in 9 years

Chimp

Bit of a clickbait title. So, what has actually changed? It's always cost to get this rating. Has it gone up? How significantly?

PolyHertz

Previously physical indie games on consoles didn't need an ESRB rating so long as they were sold directly to consumers (as opposed to going through 'traditional' retail outlets, where a kids Mom/Dad who did no research before buying a game might want/need it). Whats changed is that now no matter how a game is sold, so long as there is a physical version of it, it must be rated. The ratings costs themselves aren't the only issue to for indie games, as getting rated also puts those indies at risk of being hit by potentially massive fines (up to $1 million USD) should at any point the ESRB decide they didn't get all the relevant info needed when determining the rating.

As for the price of ratings, I'm not sure.

Zack Maxwell

Yeah, I don't think the price changed. Just the fact that it's now 100% mandatory as long as your game has a physical version.

Chimp

right, well imho its a matter of course, you get it rated and you get on with it. it's been 'required' forever, if you want to work with any major distributor / sell in any major stores - or hell, publish on any console - not because the esrb (etc) popped up out of nowhere to evilly try to wrangle pennies out of you whilst skirting the law, but because stores don't want their neck on the line for some games company slipping something dodgy in that they weren't aware of, causing mothers country-wide to get their knickers in a twist. Wallmart doesn't have a way to screen games. the ESRB exist to fill that gap.

it's not that expensive, if you can afford to make physical copies, you can DEFINITELY afford this. if you can't afford it, you aint solid enough to be doing physical copies in the first place

Here's the bit i don't get - they publish on consoles, but those consoles' TRC process require a rating anyway, so why are they so shocked?

PolyHertz

But that's just the thing, these games were never being sold through Walmart, Target, etc.
They were being sold in limited quantities directly to consumers through the companies own websites. There is virtually zero chance of some uninformed parents randomly buying one of these at a major outlet. They are produced specifically for the collectors market, and are not meant to turn huge profits.

Check out Limited Run Games previously released products. None of them have an ESRB rating on them and no one cared because it was understood it served no purpose given their business model.

R3D

PolyHertz said:

Whats changed is that now no matter how a game is sold, so long as there is a physical version of it, it must be rated. The ratings costs themselves aren't the only issue to for indie games, as getting rated also puts those indies at risk of being hit by potentially massive fines (up to $1 million USD) should at any point the ESRB decide they didn't get all the relevant info needed when determining the rating.

As for the price of ratings, I'm not sure.

From my understanding, the ESRB only had power over physical copies when it came to big box retailers, since they would follow ESRB guidelines. Has anything changed recently that gave them domain over all boxed copies? Otherwise I don't see how they could fine anyone of they went through other boxed retail channels.

Chimp

doesn't matter, its forever been required on the sony side, so i'm not sure how their previous titles skirted this but evidently they've been told to look at the terms - sony at the very least, care and I don't think it's bad at all. There's a dirty great big blue playstation logo across the top of the box, they don't want their name associated with who-knows-what, that's why this process is in place with them. So how they've avoided it so far is probably why they're in hot water now I guess.

PolyHertz

ESRB has two types of ratings that a publisher/developer can submit for; short form and long form.
Short form is a free method of rating games which wont be sold at retail, while long form is for games that will. Indie publishers have been using the short form for their digital titles as well as direct-to-consumer boxed copies. Sony didn't care because the game was in fact rated, they just hadn't placed the ESRB label on the boxes (because, again, there's no point in this case). The ESRB decided to change the definition of what short form was for to make it specifically for digital-only titles. That means that digital games that were rated previously now need to be rated again, using the long form, for all physical products.

So no, they were not "told to look at the terms", they were doing things correctly as they were written. ESRB changed what was written so they could get more money, and in the process screwed over those who have a different business model then traditional publishers.