Games with micro transactions will get a label in North America
The American Entertainment Software Rating Board will stamp a logo onto games with microtransactions and/ or other in-game purchases. The In-Game Purchases logo is placed on physical packaging and at download stores.
The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) is an American self-regulatory organization that assigns age and content ratings to consumer video games. The new label is a direct reaction towards the outcry over loot crate systems in games like Star Wars: Battlefront II, Need for Speed: Payback and Destiny 2and have signaled a willingness to legislate them, reports polygon.
The labeling will “be applied to games with in-game offers to purchase digital goods or premiums with real-world currency,” the ESRB said in a news release this morning, “including but not limited to bonus levels, skins, surprise items (such as item packs, loot boxes, mystery awards), music, virtual coins and other forms of in-game currency, subscriptions, season passes and upgrades (e.g., to disable ads).”
The label will appear separate from the familiar ESRB rating label (T-for-Teen, M-for-Mature, etc.) and not inside it. Additionally, the ESRB has begun an awareness campaign meant to highlight the controls available to parents whose households have a video game console. The label is not designed to warn adult gamers that a game might contain microtransactions; it’s designed for concerned parents buying games for their kids. “Parents need simple information,” Vance said. “We can’t overwhelm them with a lot of detail... We have not found that parents are differentiating between these different mechanics.”
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Shouldn't games with this also be rated "Adult" since you need to be 21 to gamble in America... or they trying to gloss this over with a band-aid... we already know the games that come with micro-transactions. the issue is they're gambling within games made for a younger audience
Who buys games digitally these days

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Far too lightweight in my opinion.
I'd have loved an 'odds-disclosure' at the very least if not outright making all titles containing microtransaction 'M for Mature' or 18(+) by default.
A group created by the very same publishers that have created this situation is making quite possibly the most softball / least business impactful decision to mitigate any potential legal blowback? Color me surprised, i never knew their only reason for existing was to protect the corporate interest of their founders.
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Does this ESRB rating in any way protect the user? Except if parents are buying anything for the kids? Is it enforced in stores?
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Well, I don't know how it works in the states, quite frankly. Germany has the USK but I can't imagine lobbying taking place from the side of publishers. I don't even know how much of an actual impact the USK has to begin with, outside of potentially indexing some titles entirely.
Ultimately, as an 'older gamer' by now I'd much rather return to the times where games were in fact finished products (safe for actual add-ons/expansions) - if need by through legaslation/law by applying at the very least equal rules that casinos have to abide by.
Given the propsed (and evidently) non solution by the ESRB leads me to believe they don't want to bite the hand that feeds them but even then there's hope that politics may pick up up on the subject regardless of what the ESRB (and our USK) may choose to do now or the near future.
Naturally Ubisoft, EA and Activision Blizzard will dread the day they'll have to make actual fun to play games again involving any sort of creative work in the process.
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So how does this work for digital version. lol