Ok now this is sad, but it made me burst out laughing. This is an org that allows actual gambling with actual money on actual gambling machines in a sports game rated 3+, while having a cards minigame makes a game 17+ otherwise. These guys want to make sure a person is old enough to... Do what, exactly? It's titties, isn't it? They always only go after the titties.
"What sense does it make to forbid selling to a 13-year-old boy a magazine with an image of a nude woman, while protecting a sale to that 13-year-old of an interactive video game in which he actively, but virtually, binds and gags the woman, then tortures and kills her?”
Justice Stephen Breyer*, somehow arguing the opposite of what you’d think this paragraph means.
A lot of people just can't cope with the completely normal interest in sex that starts at puberty, and they want to bend the world backwards to pretend that this is a switch that flips on people's heads exactly at 18. I get that it's a complicated matter to handle, but it's also a fact of life.
There are right and wrong ways to protect kids and teens, but banning tits is just a display to appease parents who don't really want to think about it. If they did care about their well-being they'd focus on being more watchful towards creeps in online platforms rather than policing raunchy fictional content and convincing themselves teens aren't figuring out how to get it anyway, as they always have.
Meanwhile gambling for children makes a lot of money, so why would they care about the psychological issues that it causes on developing brains.
Why would they ever need this? No. Absolutely not. The ERSB is solely for informational purposes regarding the age range suggested for the game. They should not be restricting access to games pre or post purchase.
Also, how extremely stupid for anyone with any kind of thyroid or hormone imbalance, let alone the actual effectiveness or more general in-betweens.
So, let me get this straight. They want to peer into the homes and bedrooms of children all over the world? Gather photographs of them? 😬
And how do they expect this to work on a gaming PC with no camera?
Also, their comment form says not to submit any personally identifiable information, such as your name, and yet it requires you to submit your name, and it says your name will be shown publicly for all to see. To object to a violation of my privacy, I must…allow them to violate my privacy?
The world is really conspiring to give me back my life, huh? Writers and actors guild strikes, video games being locked behind face scanners, websites being locked behind DRM in the browser, and big social media time sinks imploding because speculative venture capital groups stopped drowning them in money. If they're not careful, I might actually go outisde and touch grass. Or get a hobby. Maybe even talk to another person face to face.