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Games featuring paid loot boxes will soon receive a mandatory 'M' rating in Australia
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this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2024
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No one cares about game ratings in Australia, do they?
Australians do. As do international companies selling to the Australian market.
As clarification I meant: "do people in Australia care about the tiny black and white sticker on the box which says "M - rated for mature audiences" now?"
and not: "why should the global community give a damn about Australia...".
I remember cinemas were always strict with entry into movies, but game shops never used to ask for ID. Has this changed?
Penalties will vary between states but for NSW the maximum fines for selling games with restricted classifications to underage customers are:
https://www6.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/legis/nsw/consol_act/cfacgea1995596/s30.html
https://www8.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/legis/nsw/consol_act/cpa1999278/s17.html
These seem steep enough to encourage compliance.
But G, PG, or M? The customers age is none of their business and I wouldn't expect them to take an interest.
Edit: to put those penalties in perspective the sentencing for supplying alcohol to minors scales up a maximum of $11k and/or 12 months incarceration.
https://www5.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/nsw/consol_act/la2007107/s117.html
While for tobacco the maximum penalties are:
https://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/nsw/consol_act/pha2008178/s22.html
So it looks like it is penalized significantly more lightly than alcohol or tobacco.
Ah, that is not how your initial comment came across. Though I guess you realise that now.
I honestly don't recall ever encountering any bars on buying video games as a kid, or even knowing that ratings existed, though it could just be because my parents bought most of my games. I think you're right that very few people in Australia care about ratings. To me, it's clear that ratings are almost entirely arbitrary. It's obvious that big developers get more leeway in how their products are rated than smaller developers anyway.
Europe does, at least for Nintendo e-shop. For some reason Nintendo keeps managing both at the same time. When PEGI (Europe's own ratings) is totally okay with a game, but Australia has a brain fart and thinks a retro-style shoot'm up with pixellated little spaceships shooting at each other needs to be mature, the game is suspended form the e-shop for both regions, generally for months.
There's some weird ripple effect going on I think, it goes through an international rating system of which Australia's one of the biggest member. But the fact still is a game that passes the (mostly) reasonable PEGI can still be removed from the shop if a very stupid butterfly flaps its wings on the other side of the world.