December 23, 2006
If you're underage, don't plan on buying GTA: Helsinki City Stories anytime soon.Last week the government of Finland made a change to its media classification system, the Act on Classification of Audiovisual Programs, to give the PEGI (Pan- European Ratings Information) rating system the force of law.
While video game rating previously came under the jurisdiction of the Finnish Board Of Film Classification - much like games in the U.K. are rated by the British Board Of Film Classification - the Finns will now use the PEGI ratings as its official guide, and will incorporate all previous laws - such as those making it illegal to sell 18+ games to minors.
A PEGI press release said:
This additional support given to PEGI by the Finnish Parliament sounds particularly propitious at a time when legitimate calls are made to improve the protection of minors from unsuitable content... (this step) provides further evidence of PEGI's ability to articulate effectively with national legislations on a continuing basis.
Other changes made to Finnish video game laws include the abolition of the country's existing 11+ and 15+ ratings, replaced with PEGI's standard 12 and 16. However, it has not been mentioned how the new statute will affects games distributed online, which are not covered under its jurisdiction.
-reporting from the U.K., GamePolitics Eurospondent Mark Kelly...
Comments
They'll enforce it the same as they did before, and the penalties will be whatever they were before. Judging by the article, this isn't new regulation for games. It's them changing the standard they use for their regulation to PEGI because it's more standard and well known.
VET (Finnish film rating board) game ratings were introduced several years ago. However, it was always more lax than film ratings.
There's basically two kinds of ratings: ones given by the rating board, and ones given by the distributor. If you're distributing a film, you can hand it to the rating board, and get a rating that way. However, you can also elect to just notify them that the film is unrated... and slap 18+ on the box. (I was pretty amused to find unrated 18+ label on the original Star Wreck 6 DVD release. =)
In general, the film ratings have gone more free than they were before. A few decades back, stuff was heavily censored. Now, you can publish anything; at worst films pass the censor with 18+, and you can always elect to publish them as 18+ *anyway* just to cut the bureaucracy. Pornography producers were delighted.
However, games were *never* rated by the board and probably never will be. Their ratings were *entirely* based on the importer's suggestions. When PEGI was introduced, the PEGI ratings could also be used as a guideline. Now, all they've done is codified that PEGI is definitely as solid as the VET ratings.
Think of the implications.
An odd example that'd make JT scream: Myth III: The Wolf Age, part of the glorious series with exceptionally detailed physics engine that makes the violent explosions pretty and blood flow downhill, got 11+ rating. =)
Basically nothing has changed - all I see is that we can *hopefully* trust the PEGI folks to make extremely important decisions like this better than some random overworked game importer. Besides, if PEGI screws up a rating like that, the whole Europe will scream.
/b